Richard Avedon, a name not widely known today, was a one-man cultural explosion back in the 80s and 90’s – he changed the visual landscape with his evocative, stylish and one-of-a-kind fashion photographs. Ron Howard’s eye-popping documentary Avedon takes us back in time when art, fashion, customs and publicity were awakening from endless dull, conservative “all-American” decades, as he explored the endless possibilities of the image.
Avedon contributions are still in style, copied and extended because they were significant. Best known for his black and white celebrity images, he celebrated weird and wonderful, fun and witty often putting his subjects in exaggerated situations. He was called a “cruel manipulator, existential hero and agent of death”- top model Lauren Hutton jokes that she aged 18 days in a two-day shoot. He’s said to have done 16,000 sittings, understandable in a time when imagery in magazines was top of the heap, fodder for the populace because there was no social media. From humble beginnings, photographing merchant marine ID cards, he hit the big time in New York when it was on the brink of artistic revolution.
Lots of juicy tidbits from his frequent editors Tina Brown and Anna Wintour and “names” Marilyn Monroe, Twiggy, Beverly Johnson, Penelope Tree, Twyla Tharp, The Beatles, Marlon Brando, Picasso, Cocteau, Ella Fitzgerald, Humphrey Bogart, Buster Keaton, Katharine Hepburn, Bob Dylan, Judy Garland, Charlie Chaplin, James Baldwin… you get the idea. Pushing boundaries all the way, a woman in an evening gown caressing an elephant’s trunk, supporting the equal rights movement and the Chicago Seven, revealing the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. According to Howard’s fine film, he was more disliked than liked but he was in demand, a success, a pioneer and risk taker. Fantastic images cram this wonderfully entertaining doc. It wasn’t all bread and circuses however!
