Avedon

Richard Avedon
Richard Avedon, 2004
Born	(1923-05-15)May 15, 1923 New York City, New York, U.S.
Died	October 1, 2004(2004-10-01) (aged 81) San Antonio, Texas, U.S.
Alma mater	The New School for Social Research
Known for	Photography
Spouse(s)	Dorcas Marie "Doe" (Nowell) Avedon (m. 1944; div. 1949) Evelyn Franklin (m. 1951)

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 of fashion and art. Avedon’s interest in photography emerged when, at age 12, he joined a Young Men’s Hebrew Association (YMHA) Camera Club. He would use his family’s Kodak Box Brownie not only to feed his curiosity about the world, but also to retreat from his personal life. His father was a critical and remote disciplinarian who insisted that physical strength, education and money prepared one for life. The photographer's first muse was his younger sister, Louise. During her teen years she struggled through psychiatric treatment, eventually becoming increasingly withdrawn from reality and diagnosed with schizophrenia. These early influences of fashion and family would shape Avedon's life and career, often expressed in his desire to capture tragic beauty in photos.

Avedon attended DeWitt Clinton High School in Bedford Park, Bronx, where from 1937 until 1940 he worked on the school paper, The Magpie, with James Baldwin. As a teen he also won a Scholastic Art and Writing Award. After graduating from DeWitt that year he enrolled at Columbia University to study philosophy and poetry but dropped out after one year. He then started as a photographer for the Merchant Marines, taking ID shots of the crewmen with the Rolleiflex camera his father had given him as a gift. From 1944 to 1950 Avedon studied photography with Alexey Brodovitch at his Design Laboratory at The New School for Social Research.