His personnal life

An interview with Richard Avedon at Charlie Rose. November 26, 1999.

In this interview, Avedon is asked if he has any regrets in his life. He answers to that: ‘There is something I didn’t do successfully and that’s my family life’.

I think Avedon lived in his work and it helped him cope with life. When taking portraits, Avedon saw himself and he confirms that ‘[m]y portraits are more about me than they are about the people I photograph’.

For example, the way he faced the death of his dying father was to photograph him. His father fought a cancer for seven years, during which Richard photographed him until he died in 1973.

 I found that his personal life is very discrete and unheard of. But while researching, I found out that his sister lived almost her whole life, from adolescence, in a mental institute. Avedon said, about his sister’s condition that ‘I’ve blocked a lot of this out’.

Even thow he got married twice and had a son, his life was all about his work. When he spoke about his second wife, Evelyn Franklin he stated that ‘Evelyn and I came together to have a child, a life together but what’s happened is that I’m married to my work’.