C.I like it because it is immense and because no one has been able to blend beauty and pain, ephemeral and visceral as much as he does. Now show it, Richard Avedon: Relationshipcurated by Rebecca A. Senf a Milan, Palazzo Reale until January 29th it is an opportunity to discover it or to see it again.
Richard Avedon, from origins to success
Self-taught New Yorker, born in 1923, he embarks in the navy and becomes the portrait painter of his shipmates: he takes a photo of the identity cards of the living and of the dead for recognition. Son of a clothing shopkeeper, he discovers photography and fashion on the streets of Manhattan and it will be precisely those streets, for him a natural set, in which the young Richard will make his important revolution: taking fashion out of his studies and abandoning the rigid stillness of poses typical of fashion photography.
It is a success. Harper’s Bazar, the first magazine with which he collaborates, consecrates him. It’s not just about bringing models to the streets, what Avedon is looking for is a break with the past, he wants emotion, life – or death – in a look, in a gesture. A digger of souls, starting with him. In his work there is much more than an aesthetic direction, there is always thereto awareness and control and there is the ambition of the great artist to bring to the surface the moods of those in front of him, to reveal the other, now through imperceptible expressions, now for a detail or through a movement. It is said that he was hard, very hard, severe, meticulous, obsessive. Artist quality.
In 1959, Avedon is 36 years old, he publishes Observationsa book that has become legendary, which collects portraits of charismatic characters of the twentieth century, the preface is by Truman Capote with whom he collaborates intensively on various projects.
Richard Avedon © The Richard Avedon Foundation
In 1962, Diana Vreeland became editor of Vogue and “Dick” Avedon (as he is often called) is the photographer of the legendary newspaper. It will be a long partnership and full of opportunities for the great fashion photography and not only.
He is now a master, acclaimed everywhere, who continues his photographic research, experiments, borders. Nothing personal of 1964published a year after John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s death, mixes celebrities and pieces of society, building the first of a series of great frescoes of critique of unjust America. We are in the middle of the sixties while civil strife rages, the book, with the precious essays by James Baldwin, an important African American writer, opens the gaze wide to the contradictions of the great country with the poetics and unmistakable style of Avedon, the master.
In 1974, he exhibited at the MoBUT the famous series of portraits dedicated to his recently deceased father. Jacob Israel Avedon is represented in the pain of illness, in the sadness of the awareness of the end of life. He has cancer and from the engraved and powerful images emerges the suffering that transfigures the face and gestures. Once again, the artist moves on the ridge that separates life and death, always leaning out to look at what is in the darkness of the afterlife.
Between life and death, digging into the soul
We often celebrate him for fashion photography but his exploration of the depths of the soul made him unique and different from all the other masters of photography.
In the American West in 1979, commissioned by the director of the Amon Carter Museum, takes a courageous and conscious journey along the American roads to get there, in the mythical Far West, where for five years he portrayed 762 women and men, young and old, in front of a white background, always the same, very close to the faces; here the investigator of souls truly composes the fresco of a grieving humanity. Criticism and visual strength are now decidedly mature and the great photographer breaks with all intention the picture of an America of dreams: tells people in the balance, unknown protagonists of the harshness of reality. Faces bvery good and terrible, intense and poignant, so close that you can hear their heartbeat. There is America but above all there is him, the photographer who represents his country, his people, now more than ever, observed, excavated, loved,.
Avedon_20x24, 1/8 s, R43.4, G29.9, B38.2 Richard Avedon © The Richard Avedon Foundation
Avedon is a tireless worker, he does everything: personal research and large commissions but it is in 1994 that he feels the need to take stock. Publish Evidence 1944-1994: 600 images taken from its archives for a true retrospective that has the flavor of a balance sheet.
In 2002 it comes out Richard Avedon, Portraitsa book that is still a pleasure to hold and leaf through on one side and open it on the other – if you open it all and look at it like a long trail you will find a world with its characters: the poor of West and the writers, Marylin and her father, painters, performers, fashion as a costume, family photos. His album.
Other books follow: Woman in the mirror from 2005 and The Kennedy’s from 2007, a monograph dedicated to the famous family and in 2009 Avedon Fashion 1944-2000. He has already died in 2004. He worked until the end of his life.
Dick Avedon has left a strong mark in photography, not just in the often cited fashion one; he changed the very idea of the portrait by relying not only on the large format with which he made them or on the white cloth that served as the background but occupying the entire surface of the frame making each subject important, protagonist and giving the relationship with the latter a sort of psychological encounter.
Realtionships, the exhibition at Palazzo Reale in Milan
Now in Milan it is possible to see the Richard Avedon: Relationship exhibition, divided into ten sections, it dedicates a further one to the relationship with Versace. Strong relationship, which began in 1980 with the debut of Gianni Versace, designer who in 1998 gave life to the volume Versace-Avedon. Donatella Versace writes in the current catalog dedicated to the exhibition published by Skira: “Confidence. For me it is the basis of the best relationships. With Avedon there was absolute trust. Trust in the light of him. Trust in his narrative. Trust in our common vision. Trust in our relationship. Avedon and Versace are inseparable“.
Realtionshipsthe exhibition, covers a 60-year career through 106 photographs. Coming from the collection of Center for Creative Photography of Tucson (USA) and from Richard Avedon Foundation (USA) are part of a donation of 444 prints that the master left to the Center for Creative Photography. The center, born from an idea of the university president John Schaefer and the landscape photographer Ansel Adams, today has a rich collection of 270 archival collections. Represented here are some of the most famous names in twentieth-century North American photography, including W. Eugene Smith, Lola Álvarez Bravo, Edward Weston and Garry Winogrand. An incredible place, a temple where preserving, studying and loving are one. And enjoying it is an infinite pleasure. For those who pass through Ariziona, an unhurried stop is worthwhile to live in the home of the great masters of photographybetween auditions, memorabilia, writings and vintage prints, a visual and physical experience, which then, around Tucson, there is only desert and cacti, perhaps a few coyotes at night.
If Tucson is not on the street, in Milan, at the Palazzo Reale this Avedon exhibition offers an authentic immersion: the opportunity to enter the world of a master, loved, imitated and never equaled.
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