Title: Richard Avedon
Content: a mutual vulnerability, and a moment of fusion when he clicks the shutter. You either get it or you don't". In addition to his continuing fashion work, by the 1960s Avedon was making studio portraits of civil rights workers, politicians and cultural dissidents of various stripes in an America fissured by discord and violence. He branched out into photographing patients of mental hospitals, the Civil Rights Movement in 1963, protesters of the Vietnam War, and later the fall of the Berlin Wall. A personal book called “Nothing Personal,” with a text by his high school classmate James Baldwin appeared in

Title: Richard Avedon
Content: and led him to quit his job and return to his family. Helen Whitney's 1996 "American Masters" documentary episode, "Avedon: Darkness and Light," depicts an aging Avedon identifying "In the American West " as his best body of work. The project was embedded with Avedon's goal to discover new dimensions within himself, from a Jewish photographer from the East who celebrated the lives of noted public figures, to an aging man at one of the last chapters of his life, to discovering the inner-worlds, and untold stories of his Western rural subjects. During the production period Avedon encountered problems with

Title: Richard Avedon
Content: Richard Avedon Richard Avedon (May 15, 1923 – October 1, 2004) was an American fashion and portrait photographer. An obituary published in "The New York Times" said that "his fashion and portrait photographs helped define America's image of style, beauty and culture for the last half-century". Avedon was born in New York City, to a Jewish family. His father, Jacob Israel Avedon, was a Russian-born immigrant who advanced from menial work to starting his own successful retail dress business on Fifth Avenue, called Avedon's Fifth Avenue. His mother, Anna, from a family that owned a dress-manufacturing business, encouraged Richard's love

Title: Richard Avedon
Content: works, it has often been criticized for falsifying the West through voyeuristic themes and for exploiting his subjects. Critics question why a photographer from the East who traditionally focuses on models or public figures would go out West to capture the working class members who represent hardship and suffering. They argue that Avedon's intentions are to influence and evoke condescending emotions from the viewer such as pity. Avedon had numerous museum exhibitions around the world. His first major retrospective was at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts in 1970. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, presented two solo exhibitions during

Title: Richard Avedon
Content: hallmark in 20th century portrait photography, and by some as Avedon's "magnum opus". Serious heart inflammations hindered Avedon's health in 1974. The troubling time inspired him to create a compelling collection from a new perspective. In 1979, he was commissioned by Mitchell A. Wilder (1913–1979), the director of the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, to complete the “Western Project.” Wilder envisioned the project to portray Avedon's take on the American West. It became a turning point in Avedon's career when he focused on everyday working class subjects such as miners soiled in their work clothes, housewives, farmers and

Question: In which of the arts has Richard Avedon distinguished himself?
Answer: Photography