Richard Avedon: Made in France
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,Photography & Video
Richard Avedon: Made in France Details
From The New Yorker These witty, ravishing photographs were taken in the late fifties, when Avedon was still shooting Paris couture for Harper's Bazaar—Suzy Parker, in a Lanvin-Castillo evening dress, bent over a pinball machine at Café des Beaux-Arts; Audrey Hepburn, in Dior, propped up against the bar at Maxim's like a bejewelled fountain pen. Avedon has chosen to reproduce these images not as they first appeared, however, but in facsimiles of the engravers' prints, annotated with grease-pencil scribbles, copyright stamps, and precise, typed labels composed by the editor-in-chief of Harper's Bazaar, Carmel Snow. "A picture in a magazine is a view without a window," Avedon explains. "Here you have the window—the context of production." It was a shrewd decision: the gritty frames at once lend his fantasies a renewed buoyancy and tether them to the familiar. But perhaps the most haunting vision in this volume—an encounter between deaf-mutes and dancers in a strip club—is to be found in an afterword, written by the photographer, which has the dark power of a Flannery O'Connor story. Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker Read more Review …beautifully done and deserve[s] an audience… -- The New York Times Book Review, December 2, 2001–Andy Grundberg Read more See all Editorial Reviews
Reviews
I received this book as a gift shortly after it came out. The photos are absolutely stunning, and I love the "rough" presentation. It really shows Avedon's talent- these photos are all amazing in their raw state. I never get tired of looking at this book, and as tempting as it was as a starving college student to sell it, I never could. I always joked that I'd rather take it with me to my cardboard box under the bridge than ever sell it.It's just that good a book.