Vendredi 03 Août 2012 15:13:22 par actuphoto dans Expositions

For more than fifty years Richard Avedon (b. 1923) has maintained his position as one of the great names of fashion photography. As early as the 1950s he achieved star status and was permanently attached to the magazines Harper's Bazaar and Vogue. He was the first to break down the barriers between so-called ‘serious' and ‘non-serious' photography. But Richard Avedon is more than a fashion photographer, he is also an outstanding portrait photographer who, along with Irving Penn, has transformed portrait photography in the twentieth century. While Penn's portraits are considerate and attentive, Avedon's are radical and intense. His portraits are often frontal with a minimalist white background. Avedon himself has said: “I look for something special in a face: contradictions, complexity, things that are conflictful but at the same time interconnected”. In the portraits Avedon focuses on the person's face: freckles, furrows, the gaze; they are strong, psychological and very direct pictures – windows on the soul of man. The exhibition is retrospective and features about 150 photographs that range from the glamorous world of fashion photography through portraits of icons in film, music, art and politics to the strong psychological portraits of western Americans. The exhibition is a collaboration between Louisiana and the Richard Avedon Foundation.