While in Amsterdam this past March, I had the opportunity to visit the Richard Avedon exhibit at the Foam gallery. It was an exciting experience to see prints of some of my favorite photographs. I was ecstatic to see the amount of work exhibited, some of which I had never seen before. Revisiting his work at The International Center of Photography (ICP) added to my excitement; it surpassed my expectations as I witnessed his most comprehensive body of work.
As a photographer, Richard Avedon challenged the world of photography by adding life and dynamics to photography after World War II . As I enter the ICP galleries, I was able to observe the evolution of an artist from the interior of a studio to the streets of Paris. "The New Look of Dior" resembles the elegance and the importance of the female model as well as the dress she wears. Both subjects flow together as men are mesmerized by the beauty of what they observe. Moving on from the romantic look of Dior, Avedon captures symbolic moments of the time period. His image of Suzy Parker with Robin Tattersall and Gardner Mckay at the Cafe des Beaux-Arts in Paris, highlights moments in the 1950s when American lifestyle elements (such as the pinball machine) were introduced to European culture. Later on in his life Avedon introduces color to his photographs in his portfolio titled, "In Memory of the Late Mr. and Mrs. Comfort" (1995). This body of work serves as a fable to expose the contemporary ideas of money, death, chaos, ambition and vanity.
I admire the way Avedon embraces a cinematic approach to his images, raising the stakes of what fashion photography was. The lighting and choreographed look gave the images elegance, beauty, and energy. The cinema look enhanced the icons in the image, as well as brought life of the moving image to the static life of print media.
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