Richard Avedon

Richard Avedon

Richard Avedon in an American photographer who was born on the 15th of May 1923 and unfortunately he died on the 1st of October 2004.

Richard was said to have helped define Americas image of style, beauty and culture for at least half a century with his fashion and portrait work.

I really like how Richard Arden's work is highly exposed making the whites in the photo's very white and the blacks in the photo's very black, using high contrast is something that i do when shooting portrait work, I either will use a black or white back ground with lighting close to the models face to achieve harsh bright light and also shadow. 

Although some of Richards portraits have some facial expression in them quite a lot of them do not, the models have natural faces and this is something i also like in portrait work.

I have three examples below of Richard's work.

You will notice that Richard has photographed a lot of famous faces, this is something i realised as soon as i searched the internet for his work. The models he has photographed stretch from Marilyn Monroe to J F Kennedy and his wife.

This in itself shows how famous Richard must have been as a photographers to have the opportunity to photograph these people.

I really like all three of these photographs. I think although they are all showing very little emotion you can almost know what their lives are like and how they feel about their lives. I also like the use of different shades for the background all three of these photos are bright and high in contrast however there is a medium gray, dark gray and bright white. I do prefer the bright white background however because i think it just draws the eye towards the model and not the background.