Richard Avedon Zo Wiley

Richard AvedonRichard Avedon was born on May 15th, 1923 and passed away in October 1, 2004. He was an American fashion and portrait photographer. Richard Avedon’s photography career began in 1944 when he started working as an advertising photographer for a department store. Alexey Brodovitch, the art director for the fashion magazine ‘Harper’s Bazaar’ promoted Avedon’s career at Harper’s. at first his work appeared in ‘junior bazaar’ but a year later it was in ‘Bazaar’ itself.By 1946 Richard Avedon had set up his own studio and was providing photographs for ‘Vogue’ and ‘Life’.Avedon showed models full of emotion, laughing, smiling and sometimes in outdoors settings, instead of having an emotionless model in a studio.

I really like this black and white photograph, it was taken by Richard Avedon in August 1955. Fashion is portrayed through this image as it shows a model wearing and representing a fashionable evening dress by ‘Dior’. Within the photo there are 2 elephants shown clearly and it is visible to see another 2 elephants on each side of the photo, this makes it clear that there are at least 4 elephants on the scene with just 1 woman. The lines within the photograph make it look graceful, the models pointed foot and gentle arm gestures contrast with the heavy footed elephants surrounding the model. Also the chains around the elephants feet make it look less elegant.

The models dress is pre black which contrasts with the white part in the middle which hangs down to the floor, her outfit contrasts with the grey of the elephants and the rest of the background which is also grey. The contrast makes the outfit stand out more as it is darker on a lighter background. This is good because the aim is to promote the clothes as it is fashion photography.

This black and white photography was taken in August, 1949 in a Paris studio by Richard Avedon. The model in this photo is Dorian Leigh, she is doing this shot for fashion photography. The face that she is pulling is not the usual face that you would see a model pulling, it is more humorous with her tongue sticking out. Also the model has what appears to be rabbit ears on her head. She has a pearl necklace and pearl earrings in and what looks like a black blazer to represent fashion. The fact that the model is putting eyeliner on and wearing jewellery also influences the fact that she is representing fashion.

The background of the image is over exposed but you can just make out a balcony behind the model and a building with windows. The contrast between the background and the model is a big different which makes the model stand out more as she appears to have a darker appearance due to the background being so light. This photograph is a portrait shot which means that the aperture would have been set to wide, ad the shutter speed would have been set to around 1/100th of a second. The woman that is sat at the front of the photograph is completely in focus and the background is slightly blurred out to create an affect and to make the woman seem as though she is more in focus, this also drags your attentions to her,

The medium that was used to create this photograph was black and white photography. This portrait photograph was taken of Marilyn Monroe in Richard Avedon’s studio in May 1957. It is a simple portrait photograph that represents fashion and beauty in the plainest of forms. This photograph is seen to be very influential as the model is a well known model named Marilyn Monroe. For the era that this photo was taken, the models hair appears very attractive and fashionable, linking in with the theme of fashion photography.

The contract between her skin and her clothing is a great difference which makes her stand out more over the plain grey background. The fact that she is not looking directly at the camera, suggests that this is a natural pose, also the way her body is being presented shows that this is not your usual fashion photograph, making it unique. The fact that this is a portrait photograph suggests that the aperture was set to wide and the shutter speed would have been set to about 1/100th of a second. The lighting used in this photograph is quite soft, which portrays a soft and subtle affect to the image.