I think that Avedon at this point knew fashion and knew how to create incredible fashion photography but it wasn’t enough. He needed to truly express himself and explore a deeper artistic side of himself.
That deeper artistic part of Avedon came to life with his portraits.
In 1959 his first book was published: Observations designed by his colleague and former professor Alexey Brodovitch and written by Truman Capote.
This book is made of a series of portraits of famous people like Picasso, Charlie Chaplin or Hitchcock. In the book a lot of the pages are presented in a way where there are several photographs of the same person on the same page.
I really enjoy how it is set up because for this photograph for example, on little picture the woman is smiling while looking towards the larger picture. She looks sweet and amused by the other picture. On the other picture, the woman is looking at the spectator of the photograph with a tough look. I see it as a woman looking at herself trying to show to other people how tough and strong she is. Avedon has managed to show us a part of this woman’s character, a part of who she is.
Here is another page of the book:
Some of the photographs of the book are presented in a very different way. Here are some examples:
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