Avedon : something personal / Norma Stevens & Steven M.L. Aronson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Stevens, Norma (Writer on Richard Avedon), author.

Aronson, Steven M. L., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Avedon, Richard.

Photographers--United States--Biography.

Photographers.

United States.

Photographers--Biography.

Local Subjects:

Photographers--Biography.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

x, 699 pages : illustrations, portraits ; 25 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Spiegel & Grau, [2017]

Summary:

A candid portrait of the famed photographer, co-written by his longtime business partner and confidante, traces Avedon's life from his humble New York childhood to his death during a shoot in 2004.

"Richard Avedon was arguably the world's most famous photographer--as artistically influential as he was commercially successful. Over six richly productive decades, he created landmark advertising campaigns, iconic fashion photographs (as the star photographer for Harper's Bazaar and then Vogue), groundbreaking books, and unforgettable portraits of everyone who was anyone. He also went on the road to find and photograph remarkable uncelebrated faces, with an eye toward constructing a grand composite picture of America. Avedon dazzled even his most dazzling subjects. He possessed a mystique so unique it was itself a kind of genius--everyone fell under his spell. But the Richard Avedon the world saw was perhaps his greatest creation: He relentlessly curated his reputation and controlled his image, managing to remain, for all his exposure, among the most private of celebrities. No one knew him better than did Norma Stevens, who for thirty years was his business partner and closest con fidant. In Avedon: Something Personal--equal parts memoir, biography, and oral history, including an intimate portrait of the legendary Avedon studio--Stevens and co-author Steven M.L. Aronson masterfully trace Avedon's life from his birth to his death, in 2004, at the age of eighty-one, while at work in Texas for The New Yorker (whose first-ever staff photographer he had become in 1992). The story of his two failed marriages and the love affairs he kept hidden--Avedon was a man haunted by guilt--is told here for the first time. The book contains startlingly candid reminiscences by Mike Nichols, Calvin Klein, Claude Picasso, Renata Adler, Brooke Shields, David Remnick, Naomi Campbell, Twyla Tharp, Jerry Hall, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Bruce Weber, Cindy Crawford, Donatella Versace, Jann Wenner, and Isabella Rossellini, among dozens of others. Avedon: Something Personal is the confiding, compelling full story of a man who for half a century was an enormous influence on both high and popular^ culture, on both fashion and art--to this day he remains the only artist to have had not one but two retrospectives at the Metropolitan Museum of Art during his lifetime. Not unlike Richard Avedon's own defining portraits, the book delivers the person beneath the surface, with all his contradictions and complexities, and in all his touching humanity."--Dust jacket flaps.

Contents:

Overture

Curtain raisers

His show of shows

Featured players

The house of pain

Finding life through a lens

All hell breaking loose

East meets west

Fresh affiliations

Forbidden affinities

Darkroom rivalry

Assisted living

First serving

Assorted nuts

Second helping

The Calvin campaigns

Veni, vidi ... Versace!

Back in (editorial) fashion

Believe it or not

The cash cow

Unsullied legacy

The last picture show

The living end

Parting words.

Notes:

Includes index.

ISBN:

9780812994438

0812994434

OCLC:

1011422822