He began his photographic journey working on a ship during WWII. His job. Taking ID photos of the sailors on the ship. For two years he made hundreds, maybe thousands of nothing but ID photos, when he said, one day he realized he was a photographer!
He spoke of a childhood memory of seeing a man take a photo on the streets of New York and later seeing it published in a magazine, Harper’s Bazaar. It left enough of an impact that her remembered it years later.
This man who was tasked with making ID photos, would go on to be one of the seminal fashion photographers of the 20th century. His signature style was movement. Always movement in his images.
In his portraits he choose to use a stark white background. Critics have written about how this forced the viewer to look deeper into the subject, rather than for clues in the background. How the absence of information, forces the eye to look to the subject for clues.
His “In the American West” series was so different than the beautiful images people were used to seeing, with the fringes of society being the subjects that Avedon photographed.
Yet, the white background portrait has become deeply etched into our culture and was greatly sparked and influenced by Avedon himself.
Terry Richardson and his celebrity portraits greatly borrows the narrative of the white background.
Thanks for looking.
Be inspired!
