Avedon

I wanted dig deeper into Richard Avedon cuz he meant so much to me when I was young.  I saw his photographs very early on in life and they had a huge impact on me & mart work.  When I was in high school I use to buy Vogue Magazines just to see hie work.  My favorite was and is his portraits.  Don’t get me wrong, all his work is great.  But his portraits really inspired me in so many ways.  If you look at my work its pretty obvious.  He kept it simple and so do I.

I own many of his books, saved many of those Vogue Magazines and have seen a couple of his exhibitions.  The one exhibition that changed my life was at UC Berkeley in 1980.  I saw it before I moved to Los Angeles and I will never forget it.  It was brilliant, emotional, powerful and just fun.  All the prints were big and amazing.  I remember just looking at them in complete awe.  I walked through the gallery and dreamed that someday I would have show just like this.

I also saw his show at the New York Metropolitan Art Museum in 2002 for his portraits and again it was very powerful.  I loved how the prints were done… BIG!  It made the portraits that much more powerful.  Everything he did impressed me, but it was how he saw life that really inspired me.  You should watch the documentary Richard Avedon | Darkness & Light and you will understand.  Thank you Richard for everything.