Quotes by Richard Avedon

About Richard Avedon:

Richard Avedon was an American fashion and portrait photographer. An obituary published in The New York Times said that "his fashion and portrait photographs helped define America's image of style, beauty and culture for the last half-century".
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

I hate cameras. They interfere, they're always in the way. I wish: if I could work with my eyes alone.

Richard Avedon

I think all art is about control - the encounter between control and the uncontrollable.

Richard Avedon

Anything is an art if you do it at the level of an art.

Richard Avedon

My portraits are more about me than they are about the people I photograph.

Richard Avedon

Sometimes I think all my pictures are just pictures of me.

Richard Avedon

Just advertising departments with legs and high heels.

Richard Avedon

I see pictures of myself and I always knew that what I was feeling didn't look like that guy in the pictures.

Richard Avedon

I am always stimulated by people. Almost never by ideas.

Richard Avedon

My parents put the New Yorker in my crib. I saw Vogue and Vanity Fair around the house before I could read.

Richard Avedon

I never wanted to be called an artist. I wanted to be called a photographer.

Richard Avedon

I can see myself as a very old man in a terrific wheelchair. Only, I won't be photographing the tree outside my window, the way Steichen did. I'll be photographing other old people.

Richard Avedon

The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion.

Richard Avedon

Any artist picks and chooses what they want to paint or write about or say. Photographers are the same.

Richard Avedon

Fashion is where I make my living. I'm not knocking it; it's a pleasure to make a living that way. Then there's the deeper pleasure of doing my portraits.

Richard Avedon

A portrait is not a likeness. The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion. There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.

Richard Avedon

We all perform. It's what we do for each other all the time, deliberately or unintionally. It's a way of telling about ourselves in the hope of being recognized as what we'd like to be.--PERFORMANCE

Richard Avedon

All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.

Richard Avedon

Faces are the ledgers of our experience.

Richard Avedon

How many pictures have you torn up because you hate them? What ends up in your scrapbook? The pictures where you look like a good guy and a good family man, and the children look adorable - and they're screaming the next minute. I've never seen a fam...

Richard Avedon

What ends up in your scrapbook? The pictures where you look like a good guy and a good family man, and the children look adorable - and they're screaming the next minute. I've never seen a family album of screaming people.

Richard Avedon

Author Bio

  • NameRichard Avedon
  • DescriptionAmerican photographer
  • BornMay 15, 1923
  • DiedOctober 1, 2004
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionPhotographer
  • AwardsHasselblad Award