Avedon reinvents fashion photography

At the Design Laboratory Avedon had as an instructor Alexey Brodovitch, who was also the art director of Harper’s Bazaar. 

Brodovitch saw how talented Avedon was and offered him a job in Harper’s Bazaar as a staff photographer.

It is at Harper’s Bazaar that Avedon seriously started his career and that fashion was to start changing. 

Models were usually photographed still, posing, in a studio, or a very simple background. 

Conde Nast Archive 1931
Lee Miller wearing Mirande suit

The models were there to sell what they were wearing; it wasn’t about them, as a person, but more as an object, a hanger if I may say.

Avedon had a very different approach to photographing models. 

Avedon (in Chin’s 1994 article) stated that he loved joyful and imaginative girls and that it was photographing and seeing them move and be themselves that he enjoyed, more than fashion. 

He considered the models in a very different way than the fashion world had because he saw them as women, fun and beautiful.