Duffy, along with David Bailey and Terence Donovan, revolutionized fashion photography and helped define the visual style of the Swinging Sixties.

He wasn’t just a remarkable fashion photographer though, he was also known for his innovative advertising work (long before the days of photoshop) and was a master portrait photographer too. He even shot the Pirelli calendar on two separate occasions.

Then at the height of his fame in 1979, Duffy did the unthinkable: he put away his camera and walked away from photography for good.

Below, we’ve put together a list of our favorite 30 Duffy quotes to inspire and help take your photography to the next level.

Brian Duffy Quotes

The thing about the photographs is that there is no smell or sound and in a sense it tells the truth and yet it is a lie.

One of the great problems with photography is that any twat you give a camera to can take a photograph – what that does to the photographer is immediately create an inferiority complex within him because anyone can do it, which of course they can. I worked this out very early on.

I can show anybody how to take a photograph, but I’m not sure how to show somebody how to take a Duffy photograph.

I never used a lot of film – it’s like boxing; perfect boxing is 11 seconds: one second to get to the centre of the ring and 10 seconds to keep your hands up, but they were all done in camera – with absolutely no retouching.

I never wanted to be famous. Artists are always talking drivel, including moi, because the work is the statement.

[On how he’d like to be remembered, Duffy replied:] He wasn’t as steady as a tripod.

Duffy on Getting Started in Photography

I could paint and draw, but in my group were artists like Frank Auerbach, Joe Tilson, Bernard Cohen and Len Deighton – they were all my contemporaries and I realised that all these bloody people were geniuses. So I thought I’d knock that on the head. And the most attractive girls were doing dress design, so I moved to the fashion department, which had some lovely girls in it. You had to do fashion drawing, design dresses and make them, and it turned out I was an absolute bloody genius!

I was doing fashion drawings for Harper’s Bazaar, and I was in the office of the art director, a woman called Gill Varney, and I saw sheets of contact photographs that all looked alike to me. I asked Gill why the photos were all the same, and she explained they were all slightly different.

I thought, ‘Gawd this looks dead easy compared to the drawing lark. I’ll give this a whiz. Take up photography as an easy way to make money. Just my sort of thing – women, gadgets, clothes – I must have a go at it.’

Brian Duffy Quotes on Fashion Photography

When I arrived at Vogue [in the late 1950s] it was virtually full of non-talented people, right the way through from top to bottom. These were people with s – taste; they were all phonies. You have to remember in those days it was very class-ridden. The girls on reception nearly always had double-barrelled names. It was very elitist – Lady Jemima Fawcett-Green, -Blue or -Pink – girls with fruitcake voices and thick legs, quite sweet, but not very bright, girls with pin-sized brains.

In all my time at Vogue I only did four trips. Other people did trips all the time – they wouldn’t let me out of the cage, probably rightly so.

I wanted to make women look good. That really intrigued me. To make a model look as though she owned the clothes.

The Black Trinity

Most of the photographers of that period [the late 1950s] – Parkinson, John French, Dickie Dormer – had a slightly effeminate approach, and that was the way they got through. The way to be a successful photographer was to be tall, thin and camp – you were seen to be inside the tent, and we [Duffy, Terence Donovan, David Bailey] were not. I’m not saying they were all homosexuals but a lot of them were. I can never remember Terry calling someone darling, it might have been ‘Oi, you, missus!’

Before 1960, a fashion photographer was tall, thin and camp. But we three are different: short, fat and heterosexual.

Bailey, Donovan and other photographers just didn’t have that slightly feminised view; we would just talk to the girls and make them laugh. We probably said, ‘Would you mind moving your hair back off your face?’ or, ‘All right love, hold your Bristols up more. That looks good.’ Before that it would all have been obsequious toadyism, but our way seemed to work, and we were backed up by people who liked it.

We were great mates but also great competitors. We were fairly chippy and if you wanted it you could have it. We would not be told what to do.

Duffy on Working for Elle France

I went over to Paris and worked for Elle in 1961, while I was still at Vogue , and I fell in love with them, hatefully of course. The French are the most dreadful people on earth – well, the Parisians – and I must have had some masochistic attraction to them. They were like a drug to me, and I just adored working for them. You never got anything right as far as they were concerned.

As soon as you did something, there was a dreadful, long, intellectual discussion, always a long pause, and a scratching of the head. They were never negative to the point of putting you down – some people look for negativity, but the Frogs always looked for the positive.

If all the photographs were out of focus the Brits would think, ‘Oh God, he doesn’t know what he’s doing,’ whereas the Frogs would think, ‘Mmm, that’s interesting. I wonder if this is an attempt to express visual perception in a different way?’ And then of course they’d say, ‘Well, it could be a broken camera!’ But that’s the difference.

David Bowie’s Album Aladdin Sane

The photograph was a die transfer, which I oversaw and it was all actual, no retouching.

Tony DeFries, his [then] manager, wanted to make the most expensive cover you could possibly get a record company to pay for. He couldn’t have come to be a better con artist than my good self.

Dye transfer is a genius method of being able to spend the most amount of money to get reproduction from a colour transparency on to a piece of paper. And we went to Switzerland, the most expensive place to get a plate made.

Bowie was interested in the Elvis ring which had the letters TCB [taking care of business] as well as the lightning flash. I drew the design on his face. We used lipstick to fill in the red.

To me, it [the cover] was competent, very competent, but I wouldn’t take it much beyond that.

I drew the zigzag onto his face. It was the trademark for National Panasonic – a red and blue zigzag that I took from a rice cooker. It also came from Elvis Presley, who had a ring with a lightning flash on it.

The Final Curtain

Photography was dead by 1972. Everything had been resolved between 1839 and 1972. Every picture after ‘72, I have seen pre-‘72. Nothing new. But it took me some time to detect its death. The first person who twigged was Henri Cartier-Bresson. He just stopped – and started painting and drawing.

Ninety-nine per cent of my work was advertising and crap. The people who were hiring me I didn’t like. Keeping a civil tongue up the rectum of a society that keeps you paid is an art which I was devoid of. I had nothing more to say in photographs. I’d taken all the snaps I needed to take. Maybe I didn’t think I was good enough.

In the end I guess I was the ultimate prostitute. It felt like I was on the game, because I had no respect for the people who were giving me work. If you don’t have any respect for them and you think they’re a bunch of toerags, you’d hardly have any respect for yourself, so it’s cyclical in the way that you think about yourself.

The Last Straw

I came into work, and an assistant said, ‘We haven’t got any lavatory paper, bog paper – you know, toilet paper,’ and I said, ‘Oh yeah,’ and he said, ‘We haven’t got any.’ I thought, ‘I am either going to kill this bloke or I am going to kill somebody.’ I realised in a flash that I’d ended up commander-in-chief, managing director, senior partner in charge of the toilet bloody paper.

Not only was I the senior stockholder, managing director, chairman of the board and top dog, I was now expected to get the toilet paper – the whole thing imploded. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

And that’s when I decided to knock it on the head, and that I would never take another picture. During the course of the morning I decided to burn all my negatives in the garden. Bailey happened to come round and could see what I was doing, and he stood there like a spare d – at an Italian wedding and said, ‘I could look after those for you,’ but I said, ‘Don’t bother,’ and he went.

I felt everything I had to do and say in photography had been done. Later I wished I’d kept some negs. Looking back on odd things we’ve found, I’d love to have known the sequence of prints, only from an historical point of view.

You make decisions in one period that you wouldn’t necessarily make in another. But it’s stimulating to try something new, it’s interesting to be crazy. The one thing I’ve never done is make a wrong decision as a single entity. They’ve all been wrong.

What’s your Favorite Brian Duffy Quote?

Have a favorite Brian Duffy quote from the list? Let us know in the comment section below.

Don’t forget to bookmark this page, or print it out, and refer to it next time you need some inspiration. If you’ve found the article helpful, then we would be grateful if you could share it with other photographers.

To see more of Brian Duffy’s photography, check out his images on the Duffy Archive website. His fashion and portrait work is incredible. We also recommend watching the documentary, Duffy: The Man Who Shot the Sixties (opens in new tab).

Looking for more words of wisdom from master photographers? Visit the quotes section of Photogpedia for more great photography quotes.

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If you haven’t done so already, we recommend reading our Horst P. Horst master profile article to learn more about his remarkable fashion, portrait and commercial photography work.

Horst P Horst Quotes

I like taking photographs because I like life. And I like photographing people best of all because most of all I love humanity.

You should find these things yourself. You should never copy, I never look at other photographers work. You have to see it for yourself.

All my best photos have a little bit of mess.

To get this shot, it took two days. It was the idea that counted then, not the sort of nervous rush they work in today.

Noel Coward taught me how to relax. He told me I shouldn’t worry because the subjects themselves were so frightened by the camera that they hardly saw me. That really loosened me up. But you can hide behind the camera – Clare Luce showed me that. She had been drawing on a piece of paper during our session. Afterward, I asked her what she’d been doing – and she’d drawn a sketch of me. That made me feel very self-conscious.

I don’t think photography has anything remotely to do with the brain. It has to do with eye appeal.

Fashion is an expression of the times. Elegance is something else again.

I was told that no model was to be photographed with her feet more than 12 inches apart, standing or walking. A photograph that I took of a girl sitting on the floor had to be retaken ‘because no lady sits on the floor.

[On his iconic corset photo] I left the studio at 4:00 a.m., went back to the house, picked up my bags, and caught the 7:00 a.m. train to Le Harve to board the Normandy… For me, this photograph is the essence of that moment. While I was taking it, I was thinking of all that I was leaving behind.

I had never photographed a corset before. It wasn’t easy. The light in the photo is more complex than you think. It looks as though there is only one light source. But there were reflectors and extra spotlights as well. I don’t know how I did it. I couldn’t repeat it. It was created by emotion.

[On portraits] I don’t make up my mind before, however, when I photograph them and something’s happening then you have to catch it and understand it. Try and bring it out. I don’t think we should photograph somebody with a pre-conceived idea… then it’s not the person.

It’s not how many or what kinds of lights you use, but how they are placed.

What’s your Favorite Horst P Horst Quote?

Have a favorite Horst P Horst quote from the list? Let us know in the comment section below.

Don’t forget to bookmark this page, or print it out, and refer to it next time you need some inspiration. Also, don’t forget to share it with others through the usual channels (social media, forums, websites, etc).

If you would like to learn more about Horst’s photography, we recommend reading our Horst P. Horst master profile article. To see more of his remarkable fashion photography work, check out the image archive on the Horst P. Horst Foundation website.

Looking for more words of wisdom from master photographers? Check out the quotes section of Photogpedia for more great photography quotes.

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The post Top 11 Inspiring Horst P. Horst Quotes appeared first on Photogpedia.

If you haven’t done so already, we recommend reading our Terence Donovan master profile article to learn more about his brilliant fashion and portrait photography, techniques, cameras and much more.

Terence Donovan Quotes

The magic of photography is metaphysical. What you see in the photograph isn’t what you saw at the time. The real skill of photography is organized visual lying.

I was always much more interested in doing the thing than being the thing. I was much more interested in photography than being a photographer.

When I first started, I thought that if I took enough frames, I’d get a good picture. Photographs are taken with the brain, the camera records it, but it’s a meta-physical process because what happens in an image is beyond what you see. And the problem with amateurs is that they’re too busy with the technical side. It’s the head that makes pictures and the cameras record the thought. You’ve got to be able to read the images.

When you’re young, you go on assignment, somebody steams into your pictures and it tears your guts out, you know. And you defend them. I don’t defend my work, never again. I hope you like it, I’ve tried hard. I’ve tried my best but if you don’t like it…

The problem for an amateur is that they have no reason to take a photograph.

Learning the Craft

I was a blockmaker, making printing plates and it taught me the fundamentals of exposure. On any film shoot, in any situation, within reason, I’m never more than a stop out. I can look at anybody’s face and say, 1/30 at 2.8. And if I am out, it will be a stop over, which is always the right way to be. And that was all from that training.

You have to make it look easy when you’re photographing people; have a dialogue going. You can’t hide behind your camera. When I was 15, I was shy, so I used to make myself go up to people to photograph them. I’d do anything that frightened me. And now I say to young photographers, ‘Don’t try and sneak pictures on a 100mm lens, get a 35 on and walk up to them.’

[On immitators] Look at them, running off 90 rolls of film in the hope that one of them will have a picture on it. Not one of them has seen the inside of a darkroom and most of the buggers don’t know how to load a fucking camera.

I’ve tried to keep my eyes and ears open in my life, be a bit receptive. That’s why I go and photograph where all those kids are dancing. It’s interesting. Too many people of my age are too locked off. You can look old, but you don’t have to be old. [Norman] Parkinson was 73 but he was not an old man, he was a wild man, sparky.

Creativity and Photography

There’s a lot of difference between an advertising photographer and a photographer. When I used to work for Elle magazine in France, the art director never told me what to do. You had to work it out for yourself. In Paris, there was Helmut Newton in one studio and Guy Bourdin in the other. They’re photographers, man. They weren’t nicking anything off of anybody. I watched Guy Bourdin and there’s no more way I could take a photograph like Guy than fly…

When I did my 900th interview about that Robert Palmer video Addicted to Love someone asked me where I got the idea from and I said, ‘I did something rather odd… I thought of it!’ It seems to be a rather old-fashioned thing to do.

Dedication, Hard Work and Passion Quotes

I used to get up at eight o’clock, work in the studio from nine until seven at night, go out and have a bite, come back at nine, develop all the negatives of the day, contact them and go home at 1.30. That’s how you learn how to do the job. You know what they say in the SAS, ‘Train hard, fight easy’.

Photography is a militaristic operation; you’ve got to be organised. Most people aren’t organised.

Then a few weeks later I was at the Royal College of Art and after I’d studied their work in the morning, we had some lunch and then sat down to talk. And then a girl got up and I said, ‘Where are you going?’ And she said, ‘To get coffee.’ So, I said, ‘You’ve just had lunch.’ And then the German next to me said, ‘Zis isn’t ze military now you know.’ And so I said, ‘And you can f*ck off as well!’ But do you see what that illustrates?”

What you’ve got to understand about Bailey and me is, we were fantastically hard working. Bailey and I never wanted to be successful photographers. That wasn’t the plot. We weren’t ambitious, ever. We just wanted to do it.

My first darkroom was a cupboard and I couldn’t afford a red light, so I used to have a bit of cloth handy and the cloth used to catch fire. But by God I wanted to do it.

Don’t do it if you want to be famous. As long as people leave college and they don’t want to buy a car out of photography, or don’t want to get a flat in Mayfair, if they just want to be photographers… If they have passion and if they have got something to say, they’ll make it.

It’s always been a tough job, Cecil Beaton was a tough old boy, Parkinson was a tough old boy, Eve Arnold’s a tough woman. Not a job for somebody light on bottle, I’ll tell you, photography. Not when you think of what can go wrong.

You’ve got to try hard not to develop the vague notion you might be of some consequence. ‘Cos if you manage that, you’re free from the tyranny of it. You see that a million times, people that really think they’ve cracked it and then it comes slamming out of the woodwork at them. Judo teaches you that, some skinny little bloke you think, Oh, he’s nothing and the next thing you’re lying on your back. It’s much more to do with the philosophy of life than anything to do with photography.

You don’t do something like this for money. I’ve never met anyone who’s succeeded in life purely because they wanted the cash.

Donovan on Art and Photography

Photography, for me, isn’t art. It’s specific. You can have things in photographs that are emotive, a crying child by a car crash or something, but that’s not the photograph, that’s the content that’s emotive.

Because I paint and take photographs, I think photography is a craft because it doesn’t attack you. That’s why I don’t have many exhibitions. I think exhibitions are quite dull, personally. I don’t know why. I like photographs. I like looking at them but how many times have you come out of an exhibition and gone, Phew!?

When old Avedon had that exhibition of stuff, you know, 15 foot high prints, well it was just graphics to me, and the weakness of graphics is it’s studied. Whereas if you look at a painting by Lucien Freud, skilled as it is, there’s a bit of mad vibrancy about it all. Or Bacon, insanity on the paper, but I love it because I don’t know where it came from and it mystifies me.

Terence Donovan Quotes about Equipment

Serious musicians like to hear their music played on LP as opposed to CD. Whoever’s in charge of the show upstairs, he’s got a wicked sense of humour because as they give it to you, the progress and new ideas, they take something away. You know what I mean?

Amateur photographers have got a problem because they’ve got no reason to take a picture. They’re kind of equipment junkies. When you look at a picture that Cartier-Bresson took on a 50mm…

Don’t buy a Hasselblad unless you have a tripod and an assistant. If you drop the magazine, it tends to be embarrassing, like trying to spoon up your guacamole in Acapulco. When I see a Hampstead gynaecologist on holiday festooned with a Hasselblad and lenses and no tripod, I know he is a photographer wanker.

You can’t stop technology; you don’t want to stop technology. But if you get one of these advanced modern cameras and you’re photographing a girl in a black suit against a black background you’d better switch everything off and get out the meter and take a reading. If you don’t do that, old love, you’re snookered because most of those guys that design cameras, one thing they never do is use them.

What’s your Favorite Terence Donovan Quote?

Have a favorite Terence Donovan quote from the list? Let us know in the comment section below.

Don’t forget to bookmark this page, or print it out, and refer to it next time you need some inspiration. Also, don’t forget to share it with others through the usual channels (social media, forums, websites, etc).

If you would like to learn more about Terence Donovan’s photography, we recommend reading our Terence Donovan master profile article. To see more of Donovan’s work, check out the image archive on Terence Donovan website.

Looking for more words of wisdom from master photographers? Check out the quotes section of Photogpedia for more great photography quotes.

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• 150+ Portrait Photography Quotes

The post 27 Terence Donovan Quotes on Photography and Hard Work appeared first on Photogpedia.

Horst’s career spanned more than sixty years between 1931 and 1991. During that time, the name ‘Horst’ became synonymous with the use of dramatic lighting, elegance and atmospheric style. 

He was a master of light, composition and atmospheric illusion, and his pioneering work in the 1930s helped shape modern-day fashion and portrait photography. 

Best known for his glamorous images of women and fashion, Horst meticulously posed his models, focusing on form and mystery, to create iconic images that transcend fashion and time.

Working mainly in Paris and New York, his photographs graced the pages and covers of Vogue, Harpers Bazaar, Queen and House and Garden from the 1930s onwards and he received the Master of Photography award in 1996.

For many photographers, Horst’s work remains the gold standard. Fashion photographers Herb Ritts, Tim Walker, Steven Meisel and Bruce Weber have all reimagined Horst’s pictures and acknowledged his influence. 

The elegance of his photographs… took you to another place, very beautifully… the untouchable quality of the people is really interesting as it gives you something of a distance… it’s like seeing somebody from another world… and you wonder who that person is and you really want to know that person and really want to fall in love with that person.

Bruce Weber

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About Horst P. Horst

Name: Horst Paul Albert Bohrmann
Nationality: German/American
Genre: Fashion, Portrait, Commercial, Nude, Lifestyle, Still Life, Architecture
Born: August 14, 1906 – Weißenfels-an-der-Saale, Germany
Died: November 18, 1999 (aged 93) – Florida, United States

Horst Biography

Horst was born in 1906 in Weissenfels-an-der-Saale in Germany, the son of a merchant. After his education at the Schulpforta, followed by a short period in Switzerland and Capri, he was sent by his parents to work for a Hamburg export company. 

He returned to study at Hamburg’s Kunstgewerbeschule, a well-known school of applied arts under the direction of Walter Gropius. While there he wrote to the architect Le Corbusier and was invited to be a student-apprentice in Paris in the late 1920s. 

Enter Photography

After meeting George Hoyningen-Huene, who at the time, was established as the French capital’s leading portrait and fashion photographer, Horst decided to pursue photography instead.

Horst started his career at Vogue helping out with sets at the magazines studio in Paris. He began taking pictures himself and continued working for Conde Nast Publications in Paris as a staff photographer from 1932 to 1935. 

Largely self-taught, Horst’s work was published in Vogue less than two years after picking up the camera for the first time. He would later describe his first photograph as, “a brave click of the shutter.”

He immigrated to the United States in 1935 and became an American citizen in 1943, changing his surname from Bohrmann to Horst. He served in the U.S. Army from 1942 – 1945 as a technical Sergeant. 

Establishing his Style

His career flourished in the 1930s and photographed prolifically in a style that embraced theatricality and classicism simultaneously.

He took over as chief photographer in Vogue’s Paris studio when Huene left to join Harper’s Bazaar.

One of his favorite models was Lisa Fonnsagrives (later Lisa Penn), and it was his work with Lisa that demonstrated a gradual shift in approach.

He eliminated the use of props, and instead relied on his mastery of studio lighting, established a unique style that would make him famous. 

Lisa was also the subject of some of his most successful nude studies. Horst’s inventiveness and understanding of graphical power can be seen on the cover of the June 1, 1940 edition of Vogue. For the image, he posed the athletic Lisa to create letters that spell out the magazine’s title. 

Paris in the 30s

Horst moved with the who’s who of the Paris scene in the 1930s. Amongst his closest friends were Coco Chanel, artist Christian Berard, Gertrude Stein, and Luchino Visconti.

Horst was asked to photograph Chanel for Vogue, but he found out she hated the picture. Ready to pose several days later, she showed up with a bag of her jewelry. She became absorbed in thinking about a love affair that was ending; this was the image Horst captured. It became her favorite image for many years.

He continued to have great success with his fashion work, which was formally inventive, ingenuously lit, often with a slightly surrealistic edge. 

He shared with the Surrealists a fascination with the female form, often eroticizing the body in his images.

This sense of the strange and the dramatic is beautifully evoked in Dali’s costumes for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo production of Massine’s Bacchanale, executed by Chanel, which appeared in the October 1939 edition of Vogue.

Horst’s Mainbocher Corset 

Horst’s Mainbocher Corset (1939) is one of the most iconic fashion photos of the Twentieth-Century . The erotically charged image was first published in the September 1939 edition of American Vogue and is an undisputed masterpiece of fashion photography. 

I had never photographed a corset before. It wasn’t easy. The light in the photo is more complex than you think. It looks as though there is only one light source. But there were reflectors and extra spotlights as well. I don’t know how I did it. I couldn’t repeat it. It was created by emotion. 

Horst P. Horst

Mainbocher Corset was also to be the last photograph Horst took in Paris before the war. 

I left the studio at 4:00 a.m., went back to the house, picked up my bags, and caught the 7:00 a.m. train to Le Harve to board the Normandy… For me, this photograph is the essence of that moment. While I was taking it, I was thinking of all that I was leaving behind. 

Horst P Horst

Madonna would later recreate Horst’s iconic fashion image in her music video for Vogue in 1990. You can also see the influence in Bryan Ferry’s Slave to Love music video too.

Color Photography and Books

Horst was quick to master the new color processes, which were introduced in the late 1930s. Although he perhaps is best known for his black and white imagery, he also created hundreds of vibrant fashion photographs for Vogue. 

Very few of Horst’s vintage color prints exist today because, at the time, the color capture process took place on a transparency, which could be reproduced without the need to create a separate print. 

Horst published his first book, Photographs of the Decade in 1945. His second book, Patterns From Nature was published the following year. 

Horst’s Advertising Work

In the late 1940s, Horst began taking on lucrative advertising contracts, this was partly due to fashion and cosmetic companies being more receptive to his style of lighting and giving him more freedom.

Horst continued to do advertising work well into the second half of the century working for the likes of Calvin Klein, Yves Saint Laurent, and Bill Blass.

In the early 1950s, Horst fell out of favor with Vogue when the magazine’s editor retired and was replaced by Jessica Daves whose outlook reflected the conservative nature of the times.

I was told that no model was to be photographed with her feet more than 12 inches apart, standing or walking. A photograph that I took of a girl sitting on the floor had to be retaken ‘because no lady sits on the floor.

Horst P Horst

Return to Vogue and New Direction

In 1962, when Diana Vreeland came to Vogue as editor-in-chief, she commissioned Horst to report on the Edwardian Consuelo Vanderbilt Marlborough Balsan and her collection of French works of art, beginning a new phase of Horst’s career. 

Horst and his long term partner, the writer Valentine Lawford, set off around the world, reporting on the lives of the “tres chic.” 

In this work, he pioneered the use of the small format camera and natural light for society portraiture and fashion photography. He also originated “lifestyle photography,” an amalgam of formal portraiture, an unspoken narrative, and the capturing of the surroundings of the subject.

Horst’s Legacy

Horst is one of the most adaptable photographers of all-time: he specialized in fashion (producing over 90 cover images for Vogue alone), portraits, nudes, travel, and later with Valentine Lawford houses, gardens, and lifestyle photography.

He continued to photograph for Conde ́Nast well into his 80s, and died on the 18th November 1999, at his home in Florida at the age of 93. He was survived by his adopted son, who is also his archivist, Richard J Horst. 

In 1989, Horst received the Lifetime Achievement Award of The Council of Fashion Designers of America, and, in 1996, the Master of Photography Award from the International Center for Photography. 

Horst published several books in his lifetime including Photographs of a Decade (1944); Horst, His Work and His World (1984); and Horst – Sixty Years of Photography (1991). His work has been collected in major museums in New York, Cologne, and London (Victoria and Albert Museum.)

Horst P. Horst’s Photography Style

• Dramatic lighting, use of silhouette
• Elegance, beauty
• Classical aesthetic, posed, ornamental
• Theatrical, studio atmosphere 
• Mysterious, inventiveness and surreal elements 
• Trompe-l’oeil (trick of the eye), a photograph within a photograph

What characterizes his photography from others is his use of dramatic lighting and his conception of beauty. 

Horst was influenced by the master painters, and he also studied classical poses and Greek sculpture. 

He devoted meticulous attention to every detail of the image such as the positioning of hands, arms, and feet. After a few years, he developed a more ornamental style of photography.

Horst may not have revolutionized fashion photography in the same way Martin Munkácsi and later Richard Avedon did, but he certainly perfected it.

Photography Process

He liked to be well prepared coming into a photo session. His lighting and studio props (of which he used many) were arranged in advance.

Horst’s studio substitutes for the world. With the right light and props, he creates an atmosphere, a personal ambiance, before a few square meters of white screen.

He goes to the studio, where everything has already been prepared. By him, even, the night before. The lights are in place, the props selected. There is no dithering. Brief instructions to the model. No encouraging ‘Baby, do it’. No music. Just concentration. Be it the thirties, when models had to hold their poses, or the nineties, when photography is a matter of one thousandth of a second, the goal remains the same:’ To make people look good.’ There was no mention of the word elegance during our conversations in Long Island and Manhattan.

Excerpt from Horst: Sixty Years of Photography

He wasn’t interested in technical equipment (aside from the lighting) and was certainly no camera fetishist. 

At the beginning of his career, he worked with a large-format studio camera. Later on, he used Rolleiflex and Hasselblad medium format cameras, which gave him more versatility. He used no filters. 

Picture Perfect

Horst didn’t photograph the person, but rather the pose. His instructions to models are remembered as being brief and to the point.

He was an old man by the time I worked with him. I was aware that he used to be a really big photographer, in the caliber of Avedon and Penn, but it seemed old-fashioned in that he physically helped you to do the pose – he walked up and took my hand and put it on my hip. He knew exactly what he wanted.

Renée Toft Simonsen, Former Vogue model

Whomever Horst photographed, he beguiled. It was magic to watch him at portrait sittings. When the rapport had jelled, he would ask for a Dubonnet or a Campari, depending on his mood, and then start clicking away with his Rolleiflex or Hasselblad. Even the stiffest and most fidgety of subjects overcame any natural shyness and fear of the camera in Horst’s presence because he made each one feel appreciated and beautiful. The whole process was so much like a seduction that often other people in the room felt like intruders – or voyeurs.

Barbara Plumb, Introduction to Horst: Interiors

He also believed that group photographs have no place in fashion photography, and should be used mainly for advertising work.

Making the Image

Because he was so meticulous, his photo sessions could be slow, sometimes even lasting days. 

Horst was a craftsman, who was only interested in the creation of an image. The darkroom was not his domain. 

Once the picture was done, he had no interest in the printing process, leaving instead to experienced retouchers. Many times, unable to decide which was the best shot, he would supply clients with the contact sheet, and let them decide what images to use. 

The video below provides a rare look behind the scenes at American Vogue in the ’40s. Skip ahead to 21 seconds to see a 60-second clip of Horst at work in the Condé Nast studios in New York.

Horst’s Lighting Technique

Horst’s trademark is his dramatic lighting, which was heavily influenced by the works of great painters such as Caravaggio, Rembrandt, and Vermeer.

He was known for his use of chiaroscuro – the use of strong contrasts between light and dark. His use of circular backlighting and silhouette was his own innovation and was established as his signature style. 

Horst’s Paris studio was equipped with around 20 large floodlights and spotlights. He preferred to use spotlights to emphasize the important points of a dress. 

He never used strobes, saying later that strobes, “show everything too clearly,” leaving no mystery to the image.

Master of Studio Light

He often took up to two days to perfect a lighting set-up. His setups became so complex that he could never recreate them.

First, the set has to be right. Next comes the lighting. Then the model gets dressed and moves around the set, allowing Horst to familiarize himself with her walk. It is the lighting which creates the atmosphere.

He uses a ceiling spotlight. That lends the photo something constructivist, a touch of Art Deco. The Vogue people were constantly demanding more drama. He gets dramatic effects with spotlights, as on a stage. He usually uses four, but naturally, there are no fixed rules.

[Horst] employs shutters in front of the spotlights to either reduce or open up the light, to bring out the detail of a dress. He has little interest in flat light. He wants to use light to change things, to shape them, by highlighting a profile, a structure, a detail of a silhouette.

Excerpt from Horst Portraits: 60 Years of Style

Horst’s Marlene Dietrich Portrait

One of his most famous portraits is of Marlene Dietrich, taken in 1942. She complained that the lighting setup wasn’t to her satisfaction, but he used it anyway. Dietrich liked the results so much that she ordered a dozen prints. 

She came to his studio in a ‘Lookout, here I come’ manner – and demanded the special lighting which Josef von Sternberg had discovered and which highlighted her cheekbones-her old trick. But Horst photographed the way he wanted. He is a hypnotist. Barely were the contacts ready than she ordered dozens of prints. For he had succeeded in rendering her face young and unwrinkled, with a flattering nose. The light came from below. For Horst, the matter was there by closed.

Excerpt from Portraits: 60 Years of Style

Other Horst Resources

Recommended Horst P Horst Books

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•  His Work and His World, 1984
•  Portraits: 60 Years of Style, 2001 (The first Horst book you should buy)
•  Horst P Horst, 2019

Horst P Horst Videos

Visions and Images: Horst (1981)

Vogue 100: Nick Knight and Robin Muir on Horst P. Horst

Horst in Colour (Victoria and Albert Museum)

Horst P Horst Photos

For more Horst photographs, visit the Horst P Horst website or check out his profile at ArtNet.

Recommended Reading

To learn more about Horst P Horst, we recommend visiting the Victoria and Albert Museum website. The V.A. has a section dedicated to the incredible work of the master photographer.

Fact Check

With each Photographer profile post, we strive to be accurate and fair. If you see something that doesn’t look right, then contact us and we’ll update the post.

If there is anything else you would like to add about Horst’s work then send us an email: hello(at)photogpedia.com

Link to Photogpedia

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Sources

Introduction to Horst P Horst, Victoria and Albert Museum 
In Pictures: Fashion photographer Horst, BBC Website, 2014
Created Hard-Edged Glamour Photos of 1930s Fashions, Los Angeles Times, November 1999 
Staleywise Gallery, Website Biography
Horst P Horst Website, Biography
Vogue Archive
Visions and Images: Horst, 1981

Horst in Colour, Victoria and Albert Museum
His Work and His World, 1984
Interiors, Barbara Plumb, 1993
Portraits: 60 Years of Style, 2001
Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century Photography, 2005
Horst P Horst, 2019

The post Horst P Horst: The Photographer of Style appeared first on Photogpedia.

A naked, slightly startled Julie Christie. A groovy looking Jimi Hendrix. A wide-eyed Twiggy, posing against a Union Jack Flag…

All the work of Terence Donovan. 

Along with David Bailey and Brian Duffy, Donovan revolutionized the world of fashion photography in the ‘60s. The trio dubbed the “Black Trinity” by photographer Norman Parkinson, captured “Swinging London” and were three of the most important photographers of their generation.

Donovan also directed commercials (over 3000 of them), documentaries, and music videos including Robert Palmer’s, Addicted to Love.

With a career spanning four-decades, Donovan produced some of the most famous images in British fashion history for magazines such as Vogue, Elle, Nova, and Harper’s Bazaar. 

Related: 27 Terence Donovan Quotes on Photography and Hard Work

He was a photographer’s photographer. All his work was so powerful I could not choose one outstanding image. It was all brilliant. He was an Orson Welles of photography, in every way, in stature, and in his presence.

David Bailey

Terence Donovan Biography

Nationality: English
Genre: Fashion, Advertising, Portraits, Nudes
Born: 14 September 1936
Died: 22 November 1996 (60 Years Old)

Early Life

Terence Donovan was born in Stepney, East London in 1936. The only child of a working-class family, his father was a lorry driver, his mother a department store supervisor.

He left school at 11 and started a part-time apprenticeship in lithography, studying blockmaking at Fleet Street’s London School of Engraving and Lithography.

Born in the East End, I spent most of the war in the cab of a large lorry traveling around England with my father. I went to about 10 different schools because we were moving around so much, and then I decided to become a chef. I tried very hard to get into the School of Cookery in Vincent Square. But that didn’t work because I was too young. So as the only respectable job other than lorry driving or professional soldiering in our family was that of Uncle Joe, who was a lithographer, I decided to become a lithographer.

Terence Donovan

Enter Photography

For a while, it looked as though lithography would be his chosen career. That all changed though when he discovered photography after joining the photographic department of a Fleet Street blockmaker when he was 15.

The excitement of creating pictures, developing the film, and watching an image emerge from a blank sheet of paper, began to possess him. Not long after he changed careers.

He first worked as a photographic assistant to Hugh White and Michael Williams at Fleet Illustrated, where he stayed until he was called up for national service.

Two years later, after completing his service, he joined the John French Studio, one of the leading fashion photography studios of the time.

Donovan was keen to learn and wasn’t afraid of hard work, assisting everyone from Michael Williams to John Adrian and, finally, the legendary John French.

Professional Photography

In 1959, after working a year as an apprentice for John French, Donovan set up his own studio in Yeoman’s Row at the age of 22. His time with John French had been a great learning experience, but the ambitious young photographer was determined to go out on his own.

Business was slow to start with – his first commission was a still life of a sponge cake – but his daybook was soon filled with jobs from the likes of Vidal Sassoon, Sketch magazine and the Sunday Times.

Town Magazine

One of his first contracts was with Town magazine. For a story on men’s suits published in 1960, Donovan used the gasworks and industrial settings of the East End of London where he grew up.

It is not so long ago that the only way you photographed a man was on a shooting stick in Regents Park. So I thought, right, we’ll get on to this. We’ll go to the gas works.

Terence Donovan

Donovan experimented with his style and pushed what was deemed acceptable by magazines, often using 35mm film cameras and a long lens for his location shoots. This started a new trend for photoshoots in gritty urban environments.

It was working for Town, that really got me started and got me a name.

Terence Donovan

His pictures were edgy for the time: they were grainy, with dark shadows and high contrast and full of character. He juxtaposed the soft with the hard, the luxurious with the everyday.

It was a strategy in picture-making that he would adopt time and time again throughout his career.

His gritty and noir style was more reportage than fashion photography, and unlike anything that had been seen before.

The Spy Series

His photos looked like film stills rather than fashion photographs. So much so that the producers for James Bond, auditioned one of his male models for the role of Bond before casting Sean Connery. His series of spy photos pre-dated Bond by a year.

With his reputation on the rise, Donovan attracted new clients from the advertising world as well as the leading fashion and lifestyle magazines of the day such as Vogue, Elle, Queen, and Marie Claire.

However, it was until the mid-’60s when Donovan came to prominence.

The Swinging London

In 1973, Cecil Beaton dubbed Donovan, David Bailey, and Brian Duffy as “The Terrible Three”. Their photos were raw and edgy, the opposite of the formal, static, and set up photos in magazines of the time.

Donovan along with Bailey and Duffy, captured, and in many ways helped create, the Swinging London of the 1960s: a culture of celebrity chic and high fashion. Their photos started a revolution in photographic thinking.

But the enduring legend of the Swinging London photographer wasn’t created on the pages of the fashion magazine, but instead at the movie theatre with the film, Blow Up – a mystery story with a London fashion photographer as the central character.

After the release of the film in 1966, every fashion shoot would be seen as a reason to party: free drugs, free sex, and free-thinking.

The trio socialized with actors, musicians, and royalty, and found themselves elevated to celebrity status. Together, they were the first real celebrity photographers, becoming just as famous as the people they photographed.

While photographically Donovan was in sync with Bailey and Duffy, his lifestyle was a different story. Donovan didn’t smoke, was tea-total, and was a zen Buddhist.

Advertising and Motion

In the early Seventies, Donovan – now a half-forgotten sixties hero – decided to focus on advertising work and branch out into motion.

His foray into feature filmmaking was unsuccessful. In 1972, he made Yellow Dog, a movie about a Japanese spy in London.

Donovan also directed plays, documentaries, and music promotional videos over the decade.

The money was great, but his love was photography.

Prominent figures such as Margaret Thatcher and Princess Diana continued to seek him out in the hope that his photographic alchemy would still work wonders, it always did.

One of his great talents was he could talk anybody into doing anything. There’s the famous story of Princess Diana. She was nervous and he said, ‘Don’t be nervous,’ and he took a £20 note out of his wallet, waved it in the air and said, ‘Smile at mother-in-law. She did. He got the picture. He’d get many more.

David Hillman

By the early ’80s, most of Donovan’s time was spent making television commercials and shooting campaigns for clients. Occasionally he did fashion editorials for magazines and newspapers, but it was clear that fashion had taken a backseat to the lucrative world of advertising.

A lot of his friends felt that Donovan compromised his artistic integrity with so much commercial work. He always insisted he was a craftsman, not an artist.

Music Videos

For much of the ’80s and into the ’90s, Donovan continued to move away from editorial photography, having found his talent for directing commercials and music videos in a time when budgets were almost limitless.

Donovan’s most memorable music video was for Robert Palmer’s song Addicted to Love (1986) which earned him a nomination as one of Vanity Fair magazine’s “People of the Decade” in 1989.

Over 30 years later the iconic video remains relevant.

In the video, Palmer fronts a band flanked by five stunning models on guitars. With over 64m views on YouTube (as of the writing of this article), it has been parodied by Weird Al Yankovich and had the reverse treatment from Shania Twain.

When I did my 900th interview about that Robert Palmer video Addicted to Love someone asked me where I got the idea from and I said, ‘I did something rather odd… I thought of it!’ It seems to be a rather old-fashioned thing to do.

Terence Donovan

Later Career

By the mid-90s, Donovan was a senior figure in British photography, a fellow of the Royal Photographic Society, and a photographer to the Royal family.

Though Donovan had many interests, his passion for photography remained constant throughout his forty-year professional career.

I was always much more interested in doing the thing than being the thing. I was much more interested in photography than being a photographer.

Terence Donovan

It didn’t matter how busy his schedule was, Donovan always found time to meet amateurs at local camera clubs.

In 1974, he spoke to a group of photography students at Manchester Polytechnic. He told the students never to work for an employer but instead “find something you want to do and get someone to pay you to do it.”

In 1963, he told Jean Shrimpton, “photography fascinates me. Instant fascination every time. When the fascination leaves me, I’ll give it up.”

As it never did, neither did he. He continued to photograph at his Chelsea studio until his death in 1996.

He was one of the great British photographers and on a par with Irving Penn in America.

Antony Armstrong-Jones (Lord Snowdon)

Judo and Buddhism

Outside of photography, Donovan was a keen Judoka and a Zen Buddhist. He became fascinated with everything Japanese after watching Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai for the first time as a teenager.

After work, Donovan would head to Budokwai his Judo club in London, eventually rising to the rank of black belt. In 1985, he combined his two passions and photographed the images and co-wrote the instructional book, Fighting Judo with former World Judo Gold medallist Katsuhiko.

In Judo there is no shield, no Armani overcoat to hide behind. There is immediate physical contact. You learn about yourself when you are faced with an enormous ginger-haired bloke with every other tooth missing, salivating at the thought of pushing you straight through the mat.

Terence Donovan

Legacy and Death

Donovan’s suicide in 1996 came as a surprise to everyone. His death – the result of depression – was attributed to the side effects of the steroids he was prescribed to treat a skin condition.

Donovan married twice. His first marriage to Janet Cohen was short-lived, his second marriage to Diana Dare would last until his death. Donovan had three children: Dan Donovan (musician), Daisy Donovan (television presenter), and Terry Donovan (co-founder of Rockstar Games).

After 40 years of working as a photographer, he left behind an archive of around a million images.

He published only three books in his lifetime: Women Throooo the Eyes of Smudger Terence Donovan (1964); a book of erotic nudes, Glances (1983), and Katsuhiko Kashiwazaki’s Fighting Judo (1985).

Terence Donovan photographed the 1987 Pirelli calendar. The ground-breaking calendar featured only black models, which included a then 16-year-old Naomi Campbell at the start of her career.

Donovan joined the Royal Photographic Society in 1963, gaining his Associate in 1963 followed by a Fellowship in 1968.

Shortly before his death, he was appointed a Visiting Professor at Central St Martins School of Art.

His photos of Diana, Princess of Wales, are included in the permanent collection at the National Portrait Gallery, London.

What Camera Did Terrence Donovan Use?

Donovan used many brands of cameras over his lifetime, often experimenting with different cameras and lenses.

From the early ’70s, he favored the Pentax 6×7 camera but still used 35mm cameras. In terms of lens focal length, Donovan used everything from a wide-angle lens to zooms to telephoto lenses.

For portrait commissions, he mainly used the Pentax 67 165mm f2.8 and Pentax 67 105mm/2.4 (these lenses are the equivalent of around 85mm and 50mm in 35mm format).

Watching videos of Donovan, I’ve seen him use also use an Olympus OM4TI, Nikon F, and Hasselblad. It is also reported that he used Pentax (K1000, MZ-5) and Canon EOS 1 cameras.

Donovan used medium format and 35mm film for his work. Early in his career he also used large format. He used Kodak films for both his black and white (Tri-X Pan and Plus-X) and colorwork (Ektachrome).

Donovan always considered himself a craftsman and would learn everything possible about cameras systems. While most photographers would hand their film over to the lab and printers, Donovan continued to print his photos himself and loved the process of working in the darkroom.

Other Resources

Recommended Terence Donovan Books

Disclaimer: Photogpedia is an Amazon Associate and earns from qualifying purchases.

• Terence Donovan: The Photographs (Little Brown, 2000)
• Portraits (Damiani, 2016)
• Terence Donovan Fashion (Art/Books, 2012)

Recommended Terence Donovan Videos

Afternoon Plus Interview, Thames TV, 1983

Terence Donovan – Speed of Light

Robert Palmer – Addicted to Love (1985)

Terence Donovan Photos

You can view more Terence Donovan Photos here and here

Further Reading

The Terence Donovan Archive
Speed of Light Exhibition Preview, Vogue
Terence Donovan, The Man Who Shot the Sixties, Herald Scotland
How Judo passion engulfed ‘the man who shot the Sixties’, CNN

Fact Check

With each Photographer profile post, we strive to be accurate and fair. If you see something that doesn’t look right, then contact us and we’ll update the post.

If anything is missing from the article or you would like to add something about Terence Donovan’s work and life that will benefit readers then send us an email: hello(at)photogpedia.com

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Sources

Obituary: Terence Donovan, The Independent, 1996
Stars mourn `Orson Welles of photography’, The Independent, November 1996
The Man Who Shot a Thousand Stars, The Telegraph, July 2012
Terence Donovan: the man who shot the sixties, Herald Scotland, November 2012
Addicted to Love: fashion’s favourite video for 30 years, The Guardian, 2016
Terence Donovan: Speed Of Light Preview, Vogue, 2016
How Judo passion engulfed ‘the man who shot the Sixties, CNN, 2017
Terence Donovan Archive

Terence Donovan: The Photographs, Little Brown, 2000
Portraits: Terence Donovan, Damiani, 2016

Afternoon Plus Interview, Thames TV, 1983
On Camera: Photographers at the BBC, 2018
The Real Blow Up: Fashion, Fame, and Photography in the ’60s, BBC, 2002

The post Terence Donovan: The Man Who Shot the Sixties appeared first on Photogpedia.

Below we’ve compiled an awesome list of Richard Avedon’s quotes, covering everything from his photographic process to how he shoots his incredible portraits to his thoughts on equipment and much more.

Whether you want some inspiration or you’re looking for words of advice from the best or even if you’re in a creative slump and you want a few ideas to get you out of it, then these quotes should do the trick.

To learn more about the remarkable career of Richard Avedon, then don’t forget to check out our article: Richard Avedon: The Million Dollar Man, which is one of our most popular articles.

Richard Avedon Quotes

Richard Avedon’s Photography Philosophy

I’ve never been able to put all I know into a photograph. A photograph can be an adjective, a phrase. It can even be a sentence or a paragraph, but it can never be a chapter. So, it’s been a lifetime of frustration in terms of expressing myself because of the limitations of the visual image. I believe in it, but it’s limited.

It’s in trying to direct the traffic between Artiface [sic] and Candor, without being run over, that I’m confronted with the questions about photography that matter most to me. 

Sometimes I think all my pictures are just pictures of me. My concern is . . . the human predicament; only what I consider the human predicament may simply be my own. 

I’m limited. I never felt that there was a single photograph that said everything or even half of what I knew about the subject. You get an aspect of it, you get a certain moment, you can deepen it a certain level, but I really know I can’t get into one picture.

We live in a world of images. Images have replaced language – and reading. The responsibility to your role in history in whatever is going to happen to human beings- you are the new writers. And we can no longer be sloppy with what we do with the camera. You have this weapon in your hands, which is a camera, and it is going to teach the world, it is going to record the world, and it is going to explain to the world and to the children that are coming – what that world was like. It is an incredible responsibility.

Photography Process

I hate photographs, most photographs. I cannot take a picture of something I have not known and experienced myself, because I do not know what is going on. The photograph is not reportage. I do not believe that something reports itself in a photograph. It is redrawn; it is something I am saying. 

When images are too graphic, you lose the emotional thrust.

I am only stimulated by people, never by ideas, almost never. It is always an emotional response. It is always between myself and myself and another person – this is what it boils down to. 

There’s nothing hard about photography. I get scared, and I’m longing for the fear to come back. I feel the fear when I have the camera in hand. I’m scared like when an athlete is scared, you’re going for the high jump. You can blow it. That’s what taking a photo is. 

I think I do photograph what I’m afraid of. Things I couldn’t deal with… My father’s death, madness, when I was young and women. I didn’t understand. It gave me a sort of control over the situation, which was legitimate because good work was being done. And by photographing what I was afraid of, or what I was interested in – I laid the ghost. It got out of my system and onto the page.

Fashion is about who you want to be, not who you are, it’s therefore artificial… it’s funny and it’s sad and it’s a little crazy. But I would want those elements to be in any photograph I took.

Start with a style and you are in chains, start with an idea and you are free.  

Photography Career

If a day goes by without my doing something related to photography, it’s as though I’ve neglected something essential to my existence, as though I had forgotten to wake up. I know that the accident of my being a photographer has made my life possible.

What I like about being older is that I don’t feel I need to prove myself anymore. Like an onion peeling, I don’t go to dinner parties, I don’t work for magazines anymore. What’s unnecessary? What’s important? Doing the work making the work better. Doing the job better than I did before, and the few close friends in the kitchen you get together with. We sit down and talk, really. There is no turning to the left and right – and asking people about random talk.

I believe in maniacs. I believe in type A’s. I believe that you’ve got to love your work so much that it is all you want to do. I believe you must betray your mistress for your work, you betray your wife for your work; I believe that she must betray you for her work. I believe that work is the one thing in the world that never betrays you, that lasts. If I were going to be a politician, if I were going to be a scientist, I would do it every day. I wouldn’t wait for Monday. I don’t believe in weekends. If you’re headed for a life that’s only involved with making money and that you hope for satisfaction somewhere else, you’re headed for a lot of trouble. And whatever replaces vodka when you’re 45 is what you’re going to be doing.

The Work

I think my best work as a body of work is ‘In the American West’. I did the western photos when I was around 60, and I think that — being 60 is different from 30, 40, 50 – you begin to get a sense of your own mortality. I think my aging, the sort of stepping into the last big chapters— was embedded in this body of work. [A] deeper connection to those people who were strangers. Because of my condition of that time.

One man’s fantasy is another man’s job.

I’ve become my own widow. I’m in charge of my archives; I create books, I create exhibitions… but it will be over. And when it’s over then I’ll read and rest and begin to become a photographer again… I hope. My god in the question of being an older man with passion is Matisse, because when one would have thought he had done everything, he got into bed and re-created color and did the most beautiful work of his life, and most modern work of his life. If I can be reborn for the few years that are left to me, it would make me very happy. And if not, I’ll either really go with full force or I’ll stop.

I think when you work as I’ve worked – there’s something I didn’t do something successfully, which is my family life. Marriage. I don’t think you can do it all. I think if you pay that price, that’s not a terrible price. There is no guarantee any family life is going to work out.

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.

Movement in Photos

Real people move, they bear with them the element of time. It is this fourth dimension of people that I try to capture in a photograph.

When I photograph movement, I have to anticipate that by the time it’s happened, it’s too late to photograph it.

One of the most powerful parts about movement is that it’s a constant surprise. You don’t know what the fabric is going to do, what the hair is going to do, you can control it to a certain degree and then there’s a surprise.

Richard Avedon Quotes on Locations 

I always prefer to work in the studio. It isolates people from their environment. They become in a sense… symbolic of themselves. 

So, I took my own models out to the beach. I photographed them barefoot, without gloves, running along the beach on stilts, playing leapfrog. When the pictures came in, Brodovitch laid them out on the table and the fashion editor said, ‘these can’t be published. These girls are barefoot.’ Brodovitch printed them. After that, I was launched very quickly. Those candid snapshots were in direct contrast to what was being done. I came in at a time when there weren’t any young photographers working in a freeway. Everyone was tired, the war was over, Dior let the skirts down, and suddenly everything was fun. It was historically a marvelous moment for a fashion photographer to begin. I think if I were starting today, it would be much harder.

Richard Avedon Quotes on Portraits

A photographic portrait is a picture of someone who knows he’s being photographed, and what he does with this knowledge is as much a part of the photograph as what he’s wearing or how he looks. He’s implicated in what’s happened, and he has a certain real power over the result.

When I do a portrait, I have many choices, to be completely subjective, balance subjectivity with objectivity or completely objective.

I think I’m sort of a reader – I used to love handwriting analysis. But that’s nothing compared to reading a face. I think if I had decided to go into the fortune-telling business, I would have probably been very good. What happens to me in work – I look for something in a face, and I look for contradiction, complexity. Somethings that are contradictory and yet connected. 

A portrait photographer depends upon another person to complete his picture. The subject imagined, which in a sense is me, must be discovered in someone else willing to take part in a fiction he cannot possibly know about.

I am not necessarily interested in the secret of a person. The fact that there are qualities a subject doesn’t want me to observe is an interesting fact. Interesting enough for a portrait. It then becomes a portrait of someone who doesn’t want something to show. That is interesting.

A portrait isn’t a fact but an opinion – an occasion rather than a truth.

Photographing the Surface

My photographs don’t go below the surface. They don’t go below anything. They’re readings of the surface. I have great faith in surfaces. A good one is full of clues. But whenever I become absorbed in the beauty of a face, in the excellence of a single feature, I feel I’ve lost what’s really there… been seduced by someone else’s standard of beauty or by the sitter’s own idea of the best in him. That’s not usually the best. So, each sitting becomes a contest.

When you pose for a photograph, it’s behind a smile that isn’t yours. You are angry and hungry and alive. What I value in you is that intensity. I want to make portraits as intense as people.

You can’t get at the thing itself, the real nature of the sitter, by stripping away the surface. You can only get beyond the surface by working with the surface. All that you can do is manipulate that surface – gesture, costume, expression – radically and correctly.

The Life of a Photo

I often feel that people come to me to be photographed as they would go to a doctor or a fortune-teller–to find out how they are. So, they’re dependent on me. I have to engage them. Otherwise, there’s nothing to photograph. The concentration has to come from me and involve them. Sometimes the force of it grows so strong that sounds in the studio go unheard. Time stops. We share a brief, intense intimacy. But it’s unearned. It has no past… no future. And when the sitting is over – when the picture is done – there’s nothing left except the photograph…the photograph and a kind of embarrassment. They leave… and I don’t know them.

I’ve hardly heard what they’ve said. If I meet them a week later in a room somewhere, I expect they won’t recognize me. Because I don’t feel I was really there. At least the part of me that was is now in the photograph. And the photographs have a reality for me that the people don’t. It’s through the photographs that I know them.

I don’t really remember the day when I stood behind my camera with Henry Kissinger on the other side. I am sure he doesn’t remember it either. But this photograph is here now to prove that no amount of kindness on my part could make this photograph mean exactly what he.. or even I.. wanted it to mean. It’s a reminder of the wonder and terror that is a photograph

The thing that has happened to me lately is the sense I didn’t take the photos. That they have a life of their own. It’s endlessly mysterious to me.

Subjects Liking the Work

And he said, “I hate that picture. It doesn’t look like me.” Well, for a very smart man to think that a picture is supposed to look like him… would you go to Modigliani and say, “I want it to look like me?”

There are times when it is necessary to trick the sitter into what you want. but never for the sake of the trick.

It is complicated and unresolved in my mind because I believe in the moral responsibility of all kinds. I feel I have no right to say, “This is the way it is” and in another way, I can’t help myself. It is for me the only way to breathe and to live. I could say it is the nature of art to make such assumptions but there has never been an art like photography before. You cannot make a photograph of a person without that person’s presence, and that very presence implies truth.

The photographer has complete control, the issue is a moral one and it is complicated. Everyone comes to the camera with a certain expectation and the deception on my part is that I might appear to be indeed part of their expectation. If you are painted or written about, you can say: but that’s not me, that’s Bacon, that’s Soutine; that’s not me, that’s Celine.

Richard Avedon Quotes On The Truth

There is no truth in photography. There is no truth about anyone’s person. My portraits are much more about me than they are about the people I photograph. I used to think that it was a collaboration, that it was something that happened as a result of what the subject wanted to project and what the photographer wanted to photograph. I no longer think it is that at all.

The photographer has complete control, the issue is a moral one and it is complicated. Everyone comes to the camera with a certain expectation and the deception on my part is that I might appear to be indeed part of their expectation.

I don’t attempt to make a statement about each person as an individual. I’m always more interested in what my feeling is about just living.

I strongly voice my emotions in my photographs … this is a composite portrait of the power elite, but I feel nothing at all for the majority of these people.

I began trying to create an out-of-focus world – a heightened reality, better than real, that suggests, rather than tells you. Maybe the fact that I’m myopic had something to do with it. When I take off my glasses, especially on rainy nights, I get a far more beautiful view of the world than twenty-twenty people get. I wanted to reproduce this more poetic image that I was privately enjoying.

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 family album of screaming people.

Fiction and Storytelling

[The] Camera lies all the time. It’s all it does is lie, because when you choose this moment instead of this moment, when you… the moment you’ve made a choice, you’re lying about something larger. Lying is an ugly word. I don’t mean lying. But any artist picks and chooses what they want to paint or write about or say. Photographers are the same.

We all perform. It’s what we do for each other all the time, deliberately or unintentionally. It’s a way of telling about ourselves in the hope of being recognized as what we’d like to be. I trust performances. Stripping them away doesn’t necessarily get you closer to anything. The way someone who’s being photographed presents himself to the camera and the effect of the photographer’s response on that presence is what the making of a portrait is about.

When I was a boy, my family took great care with our snapshots. We really planned them. We made compositions. We posed in front of expensive cars, homes, that weren’t ours. We borrowed dogs. Almost every family picture taken of us when I was young had a different borrowed dog in it.

I think the larger issue is that photography is not reportage, it is not journalism – it is fiction. When I go to the west and do the working class (it is more about the working class than the west) – it is my view. Like John Wayne is Hollywood’s view. So, it means my idea of the working class is a fiction.

Beauty and Models

I liked girls who were full of imagination and fun. I loved watching them move, I wasn’t interested in fashion but in making images that reflected a burst of energy and joy.

Beauty can be as isolating as genius or deformity. I have always been aware of the relationship between madness and beauty.

I’m looking for people who are surprising, heartbreaking or beautiful in a terrifying way; beauty that may scare you to death until you acknowledge it as a part of yourself.

First of all, a model has to have the perfect ability to show clothes and then for me, there has to be the complexities and the things I know about that have the things I know about, which have to do with the layering of what it is to be a beautiful woman: the vulnerability, the isolation.

Youth never moves me. I seldom see anything very beautiful in a young face. I do, though – – in the downward curve of Maugham’s lips, in Isak Dinesen’s hands. So much has been written there, there is so much to be read if one could only read. I feel most of the people in my book, Observations, are earthly saints. Because they are obsessed, obsessed with work of one sort or another. To dance, to be beautiful, tell stories, solve riddles, perform in the street. Zavattini’s mouth and Escudero’s eyes, the smile of Marie-Louise Bousquet: they are sermons on bravado.

I’ve tried to get rid of the artificiality of women seen as ideas and to transform them into real women who go into shops, walk down the street, and cry on the underground.

Photography as Art

To be an artist – to be a photographer, you need to nurture the thing that most people discard… You have to keep them alive in order to tap them. It’s been important my entire life not to let go of anything which most people would throw in the ashcan. I need to be in touch with my fragility, the man in me, the woman in me. The child in me. The grandfather in me. All these things, they need to be kept alive. 

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

Photography has always reminded me of the second child… trying to prove itself. The fact that it wasn’t really considered an art… that it was considered a craft… has trapped almost every serious photographer.

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

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

It’s just strange to me that anyone would ever think that a work of art shouldn’t be disturbing or shouldn’t be invasive. I mean, that’s the property of a work of art, that’s the arena of a work of art is to disturb, to make you think, to make you feel. If my work didn’t disturb from time to time, it would be a failure in my own eyes. It’s meant to disturb – in a positive way.

On Equipment

I am not interested in the technique of photography or camera. I am not interested in light. What I want is light in which the subject is free to move in any way without falling into an ugly light. So that I can get to them, to the expression they make, so that they are free to do or express something which is the way I feel.

The camera mostly [gets] in the way. If I could do what I want with my eyes alone, I would be happy. Then when I get it on paper, on the negative, if there was something in the eyes when I took the picture, then when I look at the print, there are things that I can do to emphasize that. But when I’m used to an approach, it becomes like a person that I have no response to.

To get a satisfactory print, one that contains all that you intended, is very often more difficult and dangerous than the sitting itself. When I’m photographing, I immediately know when I’ve got the image I really want. But to get the image out of the camera and into the open is another matter.

Richard Avedon Quotes Final Words

Which of these Richard Avedon quotes was your favorite? Let us know in the comment section below!

By the way, if you haven’t done so already then we recommend reading our: Richard Avedon: The Million Dollar Man article to learn more about the legendary photographer and his incredible career. Also, be sure to visit the Richard Avedon Foundation website.

The post The 70 Best Richard Avedon Quotes appeared first on Photogpedia.

He was known for breaking photographic boundaries in the fashion and political world. Ranging from work found in Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar to the New Yorker, Avedon was able to capture the rare emotion and unique essence of his subjects.

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Richard Avedon Biography

Name: Richard Avedon
Nationality: American
Genre: Fashion, Commercial, Portrait, Documentary
Born: May 15, 1923
Died: October 1, 2004 (81 years old)

Who Is Richard Avedon?

Richard Avedon was best known for his work in the fashion world and his minimalist portraits. 

During his career, Avedon worked for fashion magazines, Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, and served as The New Yorker’s first staff photographer. 

He was reputed to be the world’s highest-paid photographer, with his Vogue contract earning him an annual salary of 1 million dollars in 1966 (the equivalent of $8 million in 2020.)

Avedon was such a predominant cultural force that he inspired the classic 1957 film Funny Face, in which Fred Astaire’s character is based on Avedon’s life.

Avedon’s early fashion photography didn’t conform to the conventional photos of the time, whereby models were simply coat-hangers and posed statue-like, almost frozen-in-time. Instead, he enlivened his models, introducing a sense of movement, emotion, and spontaneity into his photos.

In his portraits, his trademark was to present his sitters in full frontal view against a white background. There is no distraction or context in his pictures, other than the features and expression of the face itself.

His iconic portraits of celebrities include Marilyn Monroe, The Beatles, Andy Warhol and Elizabeth Taylor.

Avedon’s Influence

His photographic style has been widely imitated by many photographers. Generations of models have been photographed against seamless white backdrops or sat pensively in cafes, whilst pretending to be in love or alone – all because of Avedon. 

Throughout his life, Avedon maintained a unique style of portraiture that combined the rigor of the studio with the spontaneity of location work. 

Avedon’s incredible body of work wasn’t limited to fashion and portraiture though, with some of his finest images coming from his documentary work on subjects like mental health, civil rights, and the Vietnam War.

The breadth and creativity of Avedon’s work made him one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century. 

Richard Avedon is a true genius of photography and one of the greatest artists of our time.

Donatella Versace

As the history of music might be divided into the periods, Before Stravinsky and After Stravinsky, so too can Photography be divided into Before and After Avedon.

Early Life

Born on the 15th of May 1923, in New York City, Richard Avedon, who was also known by family and friends as “Dick,” was the son of Russian-Jewish parents, Jacob and Anna Avedon. 

His exposure to fashion and photography began at an early age. Avedon’s father owned a clothing store called, Avedon’s Fifth Avenue and his mother came from a family of dress manufacturers.

The Young Photographer

Inspired by his parents’ clothing businesses, as a boy, Avedon took a great interest in fashion and enjoyed photographing the clothes in his father’s store.

His family subscribed to various women’s fashion magazines, which exposed a young Richard to the exciting breakthrough photography being done by the likes of Martin Munkácsi for Harper’s Bazaar, as well as work by Louise Dahl-Wolfe and Toni Frissell.

Avedon would cut out pictures and then try to imitate them. According to one story, he also covered the walls of his bedroom with magazine fashion photographs.

Equipped with his Kodak Box Brownie camera, he began taking pictures of his younger sister, his mother, and cousin. Louise, his younger sister was his first model. Unfortunately, during her adolescence, Louise struggled with mental health issues; she eventually began psychiatric treatment and was diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Avedon later described one childhood moment which sparked his interest in fashion photography: 

One evening my father and I were walking down Fifth Avenue looking at the store windows. In front of the Plaza Hotel, I saw a bald man with a camera posing a very beautiful woman against a tree. He lifted his head, adjusted her dress a little bit and took some photographs. Later, I saw the picture in Harper’s Bazaar.

Laying the Foundations

Living not far from Fifth Avenue, put him only a stone’s throw from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Here he spent hours on end studying female figures, especially those of the ancient Etruscans and others by Modigliani. These later had a profound effect on his fashion photography.

An early infatuation with theatre was inspired by his mother who encouraged his interest in the arts. 

When Avedon was ten, he became obsessed with the idea of photographing Sergei Rachmaninoff, who lived in the apartment above his grandparents on Manhattan’s Riverside Drive. After staking out the lobby with his Kodak Box Brownie, he managed to capture the composer standing next to a fire hydrant on West End Avenue. 

“I wanted him to see me, to recognize me somehow,” Avedon told a French journalist years later. “I wanted him to give me something of himself that I could keep, something private and permanent that would connect me to him.” 

At the age of twelve, he joined the YMHA (Young Men’s Hebrew Association) Camera Club.

During these years, Richard attended New York’s prestigious DeWitt Clinton High School, where he and fellow student James Baldwin put out the school’s literary-art magazine, The Magpie. 

The young Avedon wanted to be a poet; his model and inspiration was T. S. Eliot. In 1941, at the end of his senior year and a few days after his eighteenth birthday, he was elected Poet Laureate of the New York City High Schools for his poem, Spring at Coventry. 

After leaving high school, Avedon briefly studied poetry and philosophy at Columbia, but he soon took account of his gifts and switched from pen to camera. 

The Merchant Marines

When World War II broke out, Avedon tried to enlist in the military, but because of his slight stature and poor eyesight, he was only able to get into the Merchant Marine – a part of the U.S. Navy at the time. His father bought him his first proper camera, a Rolleiflex, as a leaving present.

In the Merchant Marine’s he served as a Photographer’s Mate Second Class, spending most of the war years taking ID photos of sailors at Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn, and editorial photos for the service magazine, The Helm. It was this experience that in later years greatly affected his portraiture style.

My job was to identify photographs. I must have taken pictures of one hundred thousand faces before it occurred to me, I was becoming a photographer.

Photography Career

After fulfilling his military duties, Avedon returned home with plans to become a professional photographer. 

Using some of his photos published in The Helm, Avedon convinced the influential art director for Harper’s Bazaar, Alexey Brodovitch, to let him study photography at his famed Design Laboratory at the New School for Social Research in New York City (where Eve Arnold and Diane Arbus among others, also honed their craft). 

During this time, Brodovitch taught him that commercial and editorial work should never be dull or approached in a mundane or tedious manner. Rather, it was the photographer’s responsibility to be creative and bring fresh ideas to photoshoots regardless of the subject matter. 

Avedon later revealed that during his time studying under Brodovitch, he never once complimented him on his work.

Brodovich was the father. He was very much like my father. Very withdrawn and disciplined and very strong values. He gave no compliments, which killed a lot of young photographers – they couldn’t take it. I didn’t believe compliments. I never believed compliments even until this day.

Enter Fashion Photography

Avedon started his professional photography career working for the Bonwit Teller department stores. In 1945, with Brodovitch’s help, he joined Harper’s Bazaar as the youngest staff photographer in the magazine history (he was 21 at the time.) The same year, he married model and actress, Doe Nowell. 

Avedon’s first photos for Harper’s were rejected because Brodovitch thought they were unoriginal and predictable. So, Avedon drove off to a beach with his models and photographed them walking about the sand on stilts and playing leapfrog. 

The same year, two of Avedon’s photos were featured in Harper’s Junior Bazaar magazine.

After several years of photographing daily life in New York City, Avedon was assigned by the magazine to cover the spring and Autumn fashion collections in Paris. 

Avedon and the Paris Photos

While editor Carmel Snow covered the runway shows, Avedon was tasked with staging photographs of models wearing the latest fashion out on the streets of Paris. 

Influenced by the great street photographers of the time, such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Lisette Model, and Brassai, Avedon added a sense of spontaneity to his fashion photos, something which had never been seen before. His elegant black-and-white photographs showcased the latest fashion in real-life settings. 

Women came alive in his photos, and he often captured them: talking to street performers, interacting with people or even sitting in cafés, whilst writing in their journals. 

His free-spirited approach revolutionized fashion photography, and he was then given an unparalleled degree of creative freedom.

Avedon would continue to work for Harper’s Bazaar for a twenty-year period, before moving across to Vogue in 1965, where he spent a further twenty-five years.

Life Project

In 1949, Life magazine commissioned Avedon to produce a series of photographs documenting daily life in New York City; an entire issue of the magazine would be devoted to the series for which he received $25,000 advance. 

Avedon hit the streets of New York, regarding the assignment as an opportunity to experiment with a different genre. 

After taking hundreds of photos for the project, Avedon decided that he couldn’t continue, as he felt he was entering a tradition that was already established by the likes of Helen Levitt, Walker Evans, and Paul Strand; he returned the advance and stored the negatives away for over 40 years.

The trouble was that when I got out into the street, I just couldn’t do it. I didn’t like invading the privacy of perfect strangers. It seemed such an aggressive thing to do. Also, I have to control what I shoot, and I found that I couldn’t control Times Square.

Mature Period 

Firmly established as one of the most talented fashion photographers in the business, in 1955 Avedon made photography and fashion history when he staged a photo shoot at a circus. 

The most iconic photograph from that shoot, Dovima with Elephants, featured one of the famous models of the time wearing an elegant Dior gown. She is posed between two elephants, with her back arched as she holds on to the trunk of one elephant while reaching out towards the other. 

Funny Face

By the ‘50s Avedon was one of the most well-known photographers around. His early career was fictionalized in the 1957 Hollywood musical Funny Face starring Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn. 

The film was largely based on Avedon’s first marriage to Doe (which ended in 1949). In the film, Fred Astaire plays a fashion photographer (Avedon) and Audrey Hepburn stars as the model (Doe), he creates and falls in love with. Paramount hired Avedon as a visual consultant for the film and many of his photographs can be seen in the movie. 

Also, in 1957, Avedon produced his famous homage to fashion photographer, Martin Munkasci, who created an unforgettable shot of a well-dressed model grasping an umbrella and jumping over a puddle in high heels. Avedon’s recreation features model Carmen Dell’Orefice leaping across a small puddle set against the backdrop of Parisian buildings.

Avedon’s First Book

In 1959, Avedon published his first book, Observations. Well-known writer, Truman Capote wrote the essay and the faces of celebrities and political figures of the time were featured in the pages. 

Shortly after the book’s release, Diane Arbus commented, “Everybody who entered Avedon’s studio was some kind of star.” In short, anyone who entered the studio that wasn’t famous already would be by the time they left.

By the early 1960s, Avedon had gone as far as he could go without repeating himself. So, it’s not surprising that his passions shifted from his fashion and commercial work to portraits and reportage.

He developed a strong bond with another art director, Marvin Israel and the work they did together, influenced Avedon’s later career.

In 1964, Avedon worked with Marvin Israel on his second book, Nothing Personal. The book represented a change in direction for Avedon and was his most adventurous project to date. 

His subjects ranged from American soldiers to the Black Panthers and even inpatients residing in a Louisiana State Hospital. The book also featured text from his old high school classmate James Baldwin.

By the mid-1960s, Avedon’s reputation had spread to Madison Avenue, where advertisers ranging from Revlon to Douglas Aircraft booked him for campaigns. He was a man in demand, with his studio annual billings reaching upwards of $250,000.

Moving to Vogue

After guest-editing Harper’s Bazaar’s April 1965 issue, Avedon quit the magazine after he faced criticism over his collaboration with models of color. 

Shortly after, he joined Vogue, signing a contract for an unprecedented $1 million. At Vogue, he worked under Diana Vreeland again, after she left Harper’s Bazaar in 1962. 

Vreeland gave Avedon free rein and more importantly, she protected him from the interference of Vogue’sart director, Alexander Liberman.

At Vogue, he became the leading photographer and would go on to photograph most of the magazine’s covers from 1973 until late 1988, when Anna Wintour took over from Vreeland as editor-in-chief.

Through the ‘60s and ‘70s, Avedon continued to push the boundaries of fashion photography with often surreal and provocative images. Unlike other photographers of the time, Avedon’s pictures never upstaged the fashion. Instead, he managed to find the right balance.

“With Dick Avedon, you always knew you were looking at a fashion photograph,” said Grace Mirabella, who was editor of Vogue. “He never tried to forsake style for a strong image.”

Creating Memorable Portraits

In addition to his fashion photography, Avedon was also well known for his portraiture.

There’s always been a separation between fashion and what I call my ‘deeper’ work. 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. It’s not important what I consider myself to be, but I consider myself to be a portrait photographer.

His black-and-white portraits captured the essential humanity and vulnerability lurking in such larger-than-life figures such as Marilyn Monroe, Charlie Chaplin, and Bob Dylan.

In l967, Avedon produced his famous portrait set of The Beatles. The first set became one of the first major rock poster series and consisted of five psychedelic portraits of the group – four solarized individual color portraits and a black-and-white group portrait.

Avedon also took portraits of leading political figures from President Eisenhower to civil rights leaders such as Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. In addition to his work for Vogue, Avedon was also a driving force behind photography’s emergence as a legitimate art form.

Political and Documentary Work

In 1969, Avedon’s involvement with contemporary politics, particularly the anti-war efforts, inspired him to produce a series of portraits of the Chicago Seven, an anti-war activist group, who were charged with conspiracy and other crimes relating to anti-Vietnam War protests by the Federal government. 

In 1971, Avedon traveled to Vietnam as a U.S. war correspondent. The same year, he was arrested for his participation in an anti-war demonstration at the U.S. Capitol building.

Avedon’s father died in 1973, just before his 84th birthday. Avedon had photographed him frequently for six years before his death. Avedon used the photos in a new book and for his exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

In 1974, the same year he exhibited portraits of his father, Avedon became dangerously ill. He was diagnosed with pericarditis, an inflammation of the lining of the heart and was hospitalized. Following his release from the hospital, he continued to work. 

Later Period

In 1976, for Rolling Stone magazine, he produced The Family, a collective portrait of the American power elite at the time of the country’s bicentennial election. 

In the America West

Between 1979 to 1985, he worked extensively on a commission from the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, ultimately producing the exhibition and book In the American West. 

In the America West marked a turning point in his career. Instead of focusing his lens on public figures and celebrities, he instead photographed everyday working-class subjects such as farmers, housewives, cowboys, and drifters on larger-than-life prints.

Over a period of five years, Avedon traveled throughout the western states. He visited coal mines, oil fields, prisons, state carnivals, fair rodeos and slaughterhouses to find subjects.

For the project, Avedon used a large-format 8×10 view camera, which allowed him to home in on every detail of his subject. Avedon and his crew photographed a total of 762 people and exposed approximately 17,000 sheets of Kodak Tri-X Pan film. 

While In the American West is among his most-known works, it has often been criticized for exploiting his subjects and falsifying the west. Avedon was also praised for treating his subjects with the attention and dignity usually reserved for celebrities and political figures. In the documentary Avedon: Darkness and Light, Avedon called the project his best body of work. 

Nastassja and the Python

In 1981, Avedon produced another memorable and controversial portrait. The actress, Nastassja Kinski, pregnant at the time, laid on the cold concrete floor of his studio for nearly two hours while an enormous Burmese Python crawled over her body. The Python eventually slithered close enough to stick out its tongue near her ear, giving Avedon the perfect photo. The image was printed in both black-and-white (limited print) and as a full-color poster, which sold over two million copies.

Berlin Wall

Shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Avedon traveled to Germany, with the intention of photographing the first German New Year’s party at the Brandenburg Gate since reunification. 

Instead of celebration, he encountered violence and unease. The series of photographs documenting the experience was different from his usual pictures: his photos are frenzied, chaotic and feature many close-ups of faces, highlighting that, despite the journalistic overtones, portraiture was still at the heart of Avedon’s work. 

Avedon’s interest in fashion photography faded through the years. In 1990 he made the decision to leave Vogue. Now working as a freelance photographer, his work mostly appeared in the French literary and art magazine Egoiste.

The New Yorker

In 1992, Avedon joined The New Yorker as a staff photographer – the first in the magazine’s 67-year history. His famous portraits for The New Yorker include Christopher Reeve, Charlize Theron, and Hillary Clinton. One of his most notable photo stories was his post-apocalyptic, fashion fable In Memory of the Late Mr. and Mrs. Comfort, featuring Nadja Auermann and a skeleton, which was published in 1995.

In the fall of ‘92, he began teaching a series of masterclasses with the support of the International Center for Photography in New York. Additionally, he occasionally produced innovative advertising work for print and television for brands like Calvin Klein, Versace, and Revlon. 

Avedon passed away on October 1, 2004, from a cerebral hemorrhage. At the time he was working on assignment for The New Yorker. He was 81 years old. 

At the time of his death, Avedon was working on a new project called Democracy. He spent months on the project, shooting politicians, delegates, and citizens from around the country in lead up to the 2004 presidential election.

Legacy

Avedon published eleven books including Observations (1959), Nothing Personal (1964), Portraits (1976), Avedon (1978), In the American West (1985), An Autobiography (1993) and Evidence, 1944-1994 (1994).

Besides his incredible body of work, Avedon left behind a legacy in the Richard Avedon Foundation. The foundation, created by Avedon and maintained by his family, began its work shortly after his death in 2004. Based in New York, the foundation provides a repository for Avedon’s photographs, publications, papers, negatives, and archival materials.

Avedon was also the first fashion photographer to declare himself a serious artist, at the same level as painters. And he did it loudly and very publicly. The statement wasn’t well-received by many people in the art world. But, his belief in his work and self-promotion, resulted in his photos being exhibited at world-class museums. It also opened the door for other photographers to be recognized as true artists.

Avedon married Dorcas Nowell (also known as Doe Avedon) in 1944, and they remained married for six years before parting ways in 1950. In 1951, he married Evelyn Franklin; they had one son, John, before separating.

Recognition and Awards

In his lifetime, Avedon received countless awards and honorary degrees. There are too many to list, so here are just a few of them:

• 1985: American Society of Magazine Photographers’ Photographer of the Year
• 1989: Lifetime Achievement Award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America
• 1989: Honorary graduate degree from the Royal College of Art
• 1993: Master of Photography Award from the International Center of Photography
• 2000: Lifetime Achievement Award from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
• 2001: Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• 2003: National Arts Award for Lifetime Achievement
• 2003: The Royal Photographic Society’s Special 150th Anniversary Medal and Honorary Fellowship (HonFRPS)

Since the 1970s Avedon’s work (both his fashion photography and portraits) has been exhibited in the United States and across the world. His most notable exhibitions were his first retrospective at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts in 1970 and his final major retrospective held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in late 2002.

Photography Style

In his long career, Richard Avedon has produced every genre of photography, from his advertising work for clients such as Revlon and Hertz to fashion spreads for Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue to documentary projects such as Nothing Personal and In the America West. Then, of course, you have his remarkable portraits of some of the biggest icons of the 20th century.

Avedon never believed that the camera offered an undeniable truth. This is a painful realization for many photographers and one that is still resisted even today. Whether this came to Avedon instinctively or through experience, we’ll never know. 

But he did realize that the notion of truth was irrelevant quite early on in his career, which gave him real freedom with his photographs. He could approach photography as the making of pictures and not the taking of pictures. 

For Avedon, every picture, whether a fashion fantasy or a portrait of an old woman became in a way theatre. His way of telling a story through a visual image.

That said, when it comes to trying to define Richard Avedon’s style of photography, it’s impossible to do his photographic genius justice in a few paragraphs. Instead, look at his body of work and then decide for yourself.

One thing is for certain: Avedon took the kind of pictures that got people talking. 

To be an artist, to be a photographer, you have to nurture the things that most people discard.

Fashion Photography

While his studio shoots avoided anything but the plain white background, his early fashion photography used a range of diverse locations, from circuses and zoos to the streets of Paris to the launching pads at Cape Canaveral. 

Avedon’s early fashion photographs were characterized by movement and action. He didn’t conform to standard techniques of studio photography, where models stood emotionless and seemingly indifferent to the camera. Instead, he showed models smiling, laughing and even jumping about which was revolutionary for the time.

One of the most powerful parts of movement is that it is a constant surprise. You don’t know what the fabric is going to do, what the hair is going to do, you can control it to a certain degree – and there is a surprise. And you realize when I photograph movement, I have to anticipate that by the time it has happened – otherwise it’s too late to photograph it. So, there’s this terrific interchange between the moving figure and myself that is like dancing.

Avedon always took special care to show every detail of the clothing while still introducing blur and other creative effects in his photos.

I began trying to create an out-of-focus world – a heightened reality better than real, that suggests, rather than tells you.

Avedon – The Storyteller

Avedon’s fashion photographs also introduced some form of narrative, which was a departure from the static, posed and formal fashion photography more prevalent at that time.

His fashion photos are a perfect example of how to tell a story in a single frame. His models came alive in his photos and many of the stories often revolved around the high life or the elegance of being a woman. 

By using a simple narrative, he believed that viewers and consumers would invest as much in a story about a dress (and the model) than the dress itself. Avedon knew quite early on, that you don’t sell the fashion, you sell the experience of owning the fashion.

His leading lady must always be involved in a drama of some sort, and if fate fails to provide a real one, Avedon thinks one up. He often creates in his mind an entire scenario suggested by a model’s appearance. She may be a waif lost in a big and sinful city, or a titled lady pursued in Hispano-Suizas by gentlemen flourishing emeralds, or an inconsolably bored woman of the world whose heart can no longer be touched – and so on. Avedon models play scene after scene from these scripts, and sometimes helps out by actually living an extra scene or two. The result is extraordinary for its realism – not the kind of realism found in most photography but the kind found in the theatre.

Winthrop Sargeant, The New Yorker, 1958

The Art of the Story

For his innovative fashion photographs, you’ll see examples of his approach in Funny Face watching photographer Dick Avery (Fred Astaire) shooting pictures of Jo Stockton (Audrey Hepburn) in various locations around Paris. Like Avery, he would also give his models a simple storyline to follow. 

Towards the end of the 1950s, Avedon became dissatisfied with daylight photography and location shoots and turned to studio photography for most of his fashion work, using strobe lighting which was still quite new at the time.

Dick would give them a story. When Kristen [McMenamy] and Nadja [Auermann] came out in two little black suits, he was like, ‘Oh, I think you’re crows, and you are on a branch. There’s a worm on the floor and you’re fighting for that worm.’ Very simplistic, childlike scenarios that were very immediate.

Tim Walker, Photographer and former assistant to Avedon

You can see how this photoshoot played out: in one image, McMenamy threatens Auermann with a spike-heeled shoe; in another, Auermann throws a punch while McMenamy laughs at her.

Preparation

The shots might seem improvised, but his photoshoots are far from spontaneous. Avedon would put a lot of time into preparation: researching locations, sketching proposed shots and taking test photos. On the day, Avedon would talk to the models before he would begin; discussing what characters he wanted them to portray and poses he had in mind, as well as telling them the stories he wanted them to act out.

Dick was the most brilliant of all the flashes that illuminated my professional path. His impatience was an inspiration in itself. The preparation he made for each sitting, the perfectionism – sharp, like a scalpel. And then the way he directed. His personality, which helped him clinch every shot. His timing. This man created the modern woman – the Avedon Woman.

Hiro, Photographer and former assistant to Avedon

Working with Models

Avedon’s own interest was always in the people, never in the fashions. In fact, the fashion tended to add a layer of complication to what he fundamentally believed was the relationship between the photographer and the model. 

All his early models were typically brunettes with high cheekbones in memory of his younger sister Louise, who died at the age of 42 in a mental institute.

All my first models, Dorian Leigh, Elise Daniels, Carmen, Marella Agnelli, Audrey Hepburn, were brunettes and had fine noses, long throats, oval faces. They were all memories of my sister. My sense of what was beautiful was established very early through the way in which I experienced her. I photographed her from 14 to 18. She was the prototype of what I considered beautiful in my early years as a photographer.

Music always played an important role in Avedon’s studio. To inspire his models, he would often play music and sometimes dance along with them. As Avedon stood behind his Rolleiflex mounted on a tripod, Frank Sinatra or even the Kinks would blare out from the record player nearby. 

Since he began photographing models in the mid-1940s, Avedon would always make the effort to ask them what music and food they preferred. This contributed to the relaxed atmosphere of the studio. As Polly Mellen, a Vogue editor once remarked, “They all wanted to please him.”

Avedon and the Cover Shoot

Avedon was one of the most prolific fashion photographers of all-time. Between 1952 and 1956, he produced a remarkable 26 covers (a cover every other month) for Harper’s Bazaar. The only other photographer who rivaled his record was Louise-Dahl Wolfe who worked for Harper’s from 1936 through to 1958.

He was equally productive inside the magazine, having several pages devoted to his fashion and portrait photography in practically every issue.

Unlike other photographers, Avedon wouldn’t give in to the demands of his clients. Even though he would take hundreds of exposures on a job, he would only let editors and art directors see the few that he chose for them. The only exception was when working with Diana Vreeland.

Commercial Work

Although Avedon was already famous for his fashion photography, it was his commercial advertising work that paid the bills and made his documentary work possible.

Some photographers go to the foundations and beg to hold an exhibition or go off and marry rich women. Or worse yet, they become martyrs with a following. This is because they don’t know how to make money. I don’t beg foundations or the government for money. I earn my living working with magazines and by doing advertising campaigns.

Avedon did commercial work throughout his career and lensed campaigns for the likes of Revlon, Versace, Hertz and Calvin Klein (including the controversial ads featuring Brooke Shields.) Avedon was a smart businessman who embraced advertising work, putting as much care into it as he did for the more creative jobs.

But even a creative master like Richard Avedon would still be presented with an approved concept and storyboards from clients. Avedon would shoot to the client’s specification, and then shoot his own interpretation of the concept, in hope that they would find his own ideas better.

Commercial Work and Fine Art

Many of Avedon’s most famous photographs, were shot for commercial purposes. Ironically, these photos tend to be more highly regarded by collectors than photos Avedon did with the intention of creating images as fine art. Many of his commercial photos have since been regarded as fine art and exhibited in museums and sold in photo galleries.

This is no different from the great artists in history. Before the “art market” was invented in the mid-1800s, what we now call art was produced by craftsmen for commercial purposes, usually on commission from a government, the church or wealthy patrons. This was art for a practical purpose, not for art’s sake. That is the definition of “commercial.”

So, it is significant that so much of accepted photographic art, including that of Richard Avedon, was done so often with the intention of things like selling products, copies of magazines, promoting travel, publicity, and other commercial purposes.

Portraits

Avedon was foremost a portrait photographer and over his career, he photographed countless icons such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, the Beatles, and President Eisenhower.

His portraits are easily recognized by their minimalist style, where the person is photographed looking squarely in the camera, posed in front of a plain white background, typically in black and white.

A photographic portrait is a picture of someone who knows [they’re] being photographed, and what he does with this knowledge is as much a part of the photograph as what he’s wearing or how he looks.

The Storywriters Truth

Avedon was only interested in how his portraits could capture the personality and soul of the subject. He would at times evoke reactions from them by guiding them into uncomfortable areas of discussion or asking them psychologically probing questions.

For example, if he was trying to make a sitter feel uncomfortable, he wouldn’t say anything to them. He would purposely heighten their level of discomfort to get the range of emotion he was looking for.

The Windsor’s

Take the Duke and Duchess of Windsor as an example.

The couple were experts at portraying marriage bliss and serene old age for the camera. Avedon wanted to produce something different. He arrived very late for the sitting, sending his assistant ahead to set up the equipment. When he arrived, he found himself at an uncharacteristic loss to unsettle their camera-ready faces. Knowing how much they loved their dogs, he apologized for being late and told them that his cab had run over a little dog on Park Avenue.

As they listened to the sad story, the dog-loving Windsor’s looked sympathetically at a flustered Avedon. As he continued his story, he pretended to adjust his camera, while unobtrusively snapping frames and capturing the unguarded moment. After a while, he told them he was ready to begin and the Windsor’s composed themselves in their customary serene formal manner. Avedon already had the photo he wanted.

When the photos appeared, everyone commented on how wonderfully Avedon had captured the Duke’s grief and suffering at having been forced to abdicate the throne for the woman he loved.

Through these means, he would produce images revealing aspects of his subjects’ character and personality that were not captured by others. He’d wait for what is called the “story-writers truth,” the moment in which people are naturally themselves. 

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.

Connection with Subject

Annie Leibovitz wrote in her book Annie Leibovitz at Work, that Avedon “seduced his subjects with conversation. He had a Rolleiflex that he would look down at and then up from. It was never in front of his face but next to him while he talked.”

Avedon used a square-format Rolleiflex for nearly all his fashion and portrait work up until the late sixties. In the latter part of the decade, his way of working had grown both too easy and too disconcerting and he decided to change his approach.

The camera was almost taking the pictures itself. Hovering over the camera and peering into it, I never saw the people who were there, or saw them seeing me.

For Avedon, his portraiture was about that authentic connection with the sitter.

In 1969, he began using an eight-by-ten-inch Deardorff view camera on a tripod – a cumbersome setup that brought with it a new method of working and a new set of constraints. 

Using the Deardorff, Avedon posed his subjects against a white seamless backdrop, illuminated by shadowless, diffused sunlight or flat studio lighting. With the unessential stripped away, what remained was the relationship between the photographer and the subject. 

For Avedon, who always worked not behind, but to one side of, the camera, the camera became a silent witness to the face-off between the two people making the photo.

I’ve worked out of a series of no’s. No to exquisite light, no to apparent compositions, no to the seduction of poses or narrative. And all these no’s force me to the ‘yes.’ I have a white background. I have the person I’m interested in and the thing that happens between us.

The Self-Portrait

Avedon himself has described that quality as “the unresolved mystery between reporting and storytelling.” Avedon has never disguised the fact that his own response is more important to the finished image than the feelings of the person he photographs, that his portraits are less a “portrait of them than… a portrait of what I think about them.”

With his portraits, Avedon, in a way, was really looking at himself, trying to find the darkness and light of his own existence. He would always remain in control of the sitting – they are his pictures, not the subjects. 

For the In the America West project, Avedon would stand next to his 8×10 camera and gaze at his subject. Very few words were exchanged between the photographer and his subject. Avedon would shift his weight, change his posture or body language. The subject, not knowing what else to do would do the same. He wouldn’t hide behind the camera; the photoshoot became a collaborative dance. That’s the brilliance of Avedon’s portraits. And it wasn’t a case of just mirroring either. 

Avedon’s presence and quiet communication was at the same time a statement, a question, and an invitation – I’m with you, trust me and follow my lead. And the subjects almost always did.

Photographing the Surface

Unlike other photographers of the stars, Avedon’s portraits were not always flattering and at times, they were downright brutal.

Avedon considered it his responsibility as an artist, to portray the subject, how he saw them in the moment, and he couldn’t care less whether it’s how they see themselves or how other people see them. Avedon took whatever was given to him by his subjects and made it his own.

To say it in the toughest way possible, and the most unpleasant way, what right do Cézanne’s apples have to tell Cézanne how to paint them?

Richard Avedon, Public lecture, Boston in 1987

Coco Chanel never forgave him for exposing her aging neck in 1958. But aside from her neck, he also revealed and celebrated her formidable determination and her will to stay glamorous. No one else could have made the portrait-like Avedon did and anyone who sees it is unlikely to ever forget it.

Remaining Truthful

Avedon always remained true to photography. Sacrificing flattery to create portraits that trust nothing but the surface. And if the surface is old and wrinkled, or young and empty, or bewildered and lost in the face of death, then so be it.

My photographs don’t go below the surface. I have great faith in surfaces. A good one is full of clues.

Now, if you’re a studio photographer or even an amateur photographer shooting your family or friends, Avedon’s method may not make you very popular. Then again, it depends on whether you want to be someone who just takes sophisticated passport photos or someone who makes art. The saying is, “an artist gets paid for their vision, not to record.”

Avedon believed portraits were meaningless unless they had a story to tell or at least a truth to communicate. “Faces,” he once said, “are the ledgers of our experience”.

Influences

Avedon’s early photography influence was Martin Munkacsi, whose fashion photos for Vogue in the 1930s featured outdoor locations such as the beach, where models dipped into the surf and strode along the shore wearing the fashion of the time.

Another influence was Jacques-Henri Lartigue, whose images at the turn-of-the-20th-century, showed women together at the park or cafe, always caught up in their own world.

Then there’s Edward Steichen. Steichen’s later work for Vogue and Vanity Fair and particularly his celebrity portraits have the same quality as Avedon’s. In both cases, the photographers seemed intent on catching their subjects lost in a moment of time.

Away from photography, Avedon’s fondness for realism and delving into the souls of his sitters was something he acquired from his favorite writers like Elliot, Proust, Beckett, and Chekhov. 

Then you have the world of art, in particular Goya, whose unflinching honesty Avedon found incomparable and deeply compelling. When he wasn’t working, he went to the theatre and ballet, as well as museums and art galleries.

What Camera Did Richard Avedon Use?

Avedon’s photography genius had little to do with his choice of cameras; instead, it centered around his ability to manipulate subjects into revealing their true personalities in the case of portraiture, and his sense of storytelling and fantasy in the case of his fashion photographs. 

If it was possible, he would have preferred to download images directly from his eyes and skip the whole photographic process. In fact, in various interviews, he always maintained that the cameras just got in the way.

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

Most of his work was done with two film formats: Medium format (2 ¼ Square) and 8 x 10. 

The mobility of medium format (Rolleiflex) would lend itself to Avedon’s fashion photography. Working with the Rollei gave him the mobility needed to keep pace with actively moving models, as well as a negative bigger than 35mm for higher quality and the ability to easily create larger prints.

When he wanted a tighter shot (head or head and shoulders, then he would slip a close-up dioptre on the Rollei or switch to the Hasselblad 500cm with a longer 150mm F/4 lens.

Portraits were more or less the domain of his 8×10 cameras, although he alternated between formats freely, depending on how fast he needed to work. As you can imagine the 8×10 format would slow him down. In the studio, he would use his 8×10 Sinar Norma and out in the field a collapsible 8×10 Deardoff wooden field camera would fill in for the Sinar.

List of Cameras and Lenses

Here’s a complete list of the cameras that Avedon used for his work:

2.8 Rolleiflex

Avedon never used built-in exposure meters. Some of his Rolleiflex cameras had Zeiss Planar lenses, others had Schneider Xenotars. The actual lens didn’t matter, as long as it was an f/2.8 and 80mm for just the right perspective. He frequently used closeup lenses, in which case the top one had some correction for parallax.

8”x 10” Deardorff 

This wooden field view camera was relatively light in weight and folded up compactly. It was at first equipped with a 12” lens, probably a Goerz-Dagor in an Ilex shutter, but this was later replaced with better optics.

8”x10” Sinar Norma

In 1963, Avedon purchased the more advanced Sinar Norma modular monorail camera to speed up his photography and primarily for studio use. It was equipped with a 300mm f/5.6 Schneider Symmar lens and a Sinar automatic shutter and was mounted on a sturdy Gitzo tripod. 

He also used a Schneider Wymmar-S 360mm f/6.8 lens and a Fujinon 360mm f/6.3 lens with both the Deardorff and Sinar Norma.

Hasselblad 500cm

Avedon started to use a Hasselblad with the 150mm f/4 lens in the early sixties for tighter shots out on location. Around 2002, he started experimenting with phase one digital backs for his advertising and commercial work.

Mamiyaflex

Although not as rugged as the Rolleiflex, the twin-lens Mamiya had certain advantages for closeup headshots as it focused much closer. It had a clumsy but very effective method of parallax control and allowed the use of longer lenses. 

He probably didn’t much care for it but used it for cosmetic and hairstyle photos where a Rollei with its 80mm lens would have introduced too much distortion. In later years, he used a Hasselblad for these photos instead.

Asahi Pentax 35mm SLR

Avedon very rarely worked with 35mm other than for personal snapshots, but he did use a Pentax for “paparazzi” shots during the 1962 Paris collections, and for the opening and closing photos of his 1964 book, Nothing Personal.

The above cameras are the only ones that have been mentioned in articles, documentaries, and books. He did own a Leica M3 but never used it. 

Focal Lengths used by Avedon

For reference, the Rolleiflex’ 80mm lens and the 360mm lenses for the 8×10” cameras are roughly 50mm equivalents on 35mm format. The Hasselblad 150mm is the equivalent of around 85mm.

So, there you have it, Avedon created some of the greatest photos of all time with effectively just two focal lengths: 50mm and 85mm.

If you ever get the chance, then I recommend purchasing the American Photo March/April 1994 issue, as this gives a great insight into Avedon’s cameras and studio setup.

Which Film Did Avedon Use?

Avedon’s choice of film was just as basic as his camera gear. For his medium format work, he used Kodak Plus X (rated at El 80), although he also used Kodak Tri-X, the amateur (ISO 400) version, because it pushed better. Professional Tri-X (rated at El 200) was used for his large-format photography in any light. 

Film would be developed using Kodak D76 or HC-110 or Harvey’s Panthermic 777 (no longer available).

For color work, all I could find out was that he used Ektachrome E-3 film for the In the America West project. If anyone knows anything else then send me an email, so I can update the page.

Avedon’s negatives were dense, due in part to his disregard for recommended development times. Even with normal exposure Tri-X might get 15 minutes in the tank with D-76 – over half again, the usual amount. 

Avedon used the Norwood Director meter to check his exposures. The meter measured incident rather than reflected light and was the standard for Hollywood cinematographers for many years.

Avedon’s Printing Technique

Avedon’s busy schedule didn’t afford him the luxury of printing his own work. While others may have got their hands wet on his behalf, he did oversee every step of the process. 

With his printers, he always gave them verbal clues on what he wanted, specifically the emotionally quality of the print. He’d talk about making a print happy, angry, fiery, romantic or kind. 

Once the printer had the brief and understood what he was looking for, he would then leave it up to them to realize that. If he was unhappy with the first test prints, the print would be made over again. 

Once satisfied with the test prints, he would then begin mixing and matching the different parts of the prints.

For example, with a portrait, he would choose the one with the best eyes and if the overall print wasn’t good enough for him, he’d cut out a nose or a mouth from another and paste it on. 

For a location shoot, he might cut out a head from one print and put it on the body of another, he would then cut out part of a building that had the right lightness and put it on another that was darker.

The Final Print

An Avedon final print is normally a composite of all the test prints made up to form the perfect print. Never the first prints made.

If Avedon still wasn’t satisfied, even after all the changes, he would grab a grease pencil and start marking it up all over again. Creating the perfect print was always a process for him. 

There’s a famous instructions image, which was published in Avedon’s book, Evidence, which shows all the dodging and burning that went into making the final printed image. These instructions were not made by Avedon, but by his principal printer at the time. 

The purpose of the image is to ensure that prints made for collectors are identical to others exhibited in major art museums around the world. 

The numbers on them represent specific “dodging” and “burning-in” times in seconds for each section of the image. Anyone experienced in darkroom printing will understand how difficult they are to follow.

Printing for In the America West

This black and white version of printing instructions is from Avedon at Work: In the American West by Laura Wilson. Laura has a dedicated section on the printing process used for the In the American West exhibition. If you want to know more about how Avedon shot the project and his photography process, then this is the book to get.

The difficult and time-consuming process ok making these prints began in the basement darkroom of the Avedon studio in New York. Ruedi and David [Liittscwager] started with a set of 16-by-20-inch prints. Dick rejected them all. He felt that the tone was heavy; they were too black and had too much contrast. In reprinting, Dick’s directions were rarely technical. He would say simply, “Make the person more gentle,” or “Give the face more tension” This unconventional advice forced Ruedi and David to try to Understand the emotional content that Dick sought in each portrait. On test prints, Ruedi recorded the necessary manipulations with a red grease pencil. The exposure times, plus or minus, were in seconds to indicate where to darken or lighten an eyelid, or a nose, or the wrinkle on a forehead.

Excerpt from the Avedon at Work: In the America West (p. 114-117)

Laura Wilson – Avedon’s former assistant for six years

Getting the Perfect Print

Richard Avedon wasn’t a purist in the traditional sense. He wouldn’t hesitate to crop or manipulate the image in some way to get the perfect print in the darkroom.

Perhaps the most important factors when it came to making prints were time and money. No expense was spared, and it could often take as long as a week to print one image. Prints were made repeatedly until the perfect one finally emerged.

Avedon’s Lighting

The secret of Avedon’s studio lighting should not come as a surprise to anyone familiar with his energetic style of fashion photography. 

Below, I’ll try and explain his lighting, or what he liked to call his “beauty light” in more detail.

Instead of mounting his main source light on a stand – the usual practice, and one that limits movement – he would get an assistant to hold a boom pole with the light mounted on the end.

Once Avedon’s had the light setup to his liking and the strobe reading was taken, the assistant would then follow the model with the light, the same way a sound technician on a movie set would track actors with a boom microphone.

As Avedon would shoot, the assistant would move with the model. For consistent exposures, the assistant would need to keep the light at the right distance from the subject. The light was always kept very close to the subject, just outside the camera’s field of view. 

By using this approach, there was a calculated margin for error. Avedon liked the subtle and unexpected changes that could happen through working this way.

Avedon’s moving light was normally bounced into an umbrella or small dome to soften it, while two other assistants would angle 12” squares of metalized cupboard to reflect light into the subject’s eyes. Adjustable flats were placed either side of the subject to stop unwanted light from filling in shadows or causing flare.

When describing the process, Avedon would often compare it to a Japanese ballet, where everyone knew their roles and did it silently and with great agility and finesse.

When working in color or shooting 8×10 format, where the film can be less forgiving Avedon would have his key light in a fixed position. 

White Background

Richard Avedon is arguably the most influential “white background” photographer of all time. By shooting against a white background, Avedon eliminated all distractions, putting the focus on the subject.

His white background would be lighted by two strobes heads on adjustable poles. If Avedon wanted a grey background, he would power down the lights so they were two stops less bright than the main source light (if a typical meter reading for the subject is F8, then for grey you would need to set the lights to F4.) If Avedon wanted a white background, the lights are instead powered up to within half a stop of the main light to insure a hint of tone.

In the America West Lighting

When Avedon did In the America West project, he would shoot his subjects outside against a white seamless paper which was gaffer-taped to the shade side of whatever structures he could find (barns, motorhomes, etc.) “I wanted the thrill of the person to come forward out of the white,” Avedon said

Avedon photographed his subjects in the shade, using available light and avoiding the harsh shadows and highlights of sunshine that dominate a face. He didn’t use any strobe lights because he felt they gave the photographs an artificial look. He wanted the special beauty of shaded light which had more of a neutral quality to it.

How Do You Get the Avedon Look?

I think there’s one thing that Cartier-Bresson, Irving Penn and Diane Arbus all have, and something I share, is the complete obsession with work and work every day. If you do the work every single day, hopefully the work gets better.

Charlie Rose Interview, 1993

Many imitators have struggled to replicate his signature style. Getting what is known as “The Avedon Look” isn’t a case of shooting against a white background with a large-format camera (or Rolleiflex) loaded with Kodak Tri-X. 

Avedon often said that there is an element of himself in every photo he has ever taken. Now unless you’re born Richard Avedon, getting an Avedon photograph is going to be impossible. What we can hopefully do though is give you a few hints to help get close enough to his signature style.

Richard Avedon taught me that if you go into a photo session and come out with what you had hoped for, it’s a failure. You need to be surprised if you want it to be magical.

Amy Arbus, Photographer and former Avedon Masterclass member

Capturing the Moment

Avedon always knew what he wanted before going into his photoshoot. However, instead of getting stuck on getting the photo he planned, he would remain flexible and photograph what was in front of him instead. If you look at his most iconic photos, you’ll notice that they’re photos that can never be recreated. His Nastassja Kinski, Charlie Chaplin, and Marilyn Monroe portraits are perfect examples of this. 

Nothing I have ever done has been calculated. It comes out of instinct.

Avedon also liked to be able to shoot models being active and in motion whenever possible. When photographing subjects, he would tell them to jump, and to “jump higher!” at the same time he would be jumping with them.

Snapshots that have been taken of me working show something I was not aware of at all, that over and over again I’m holding my own body or my own hands exactly like the person I’m photographing. I never knew I did that, and obviously what I’m doing is trying to feel, actually physically feel, the way he or she feels at the moment I’m photographing them in order to deepen the sense of connection.

What’s often overlooked in Avedon’s style, is the trust and connection he builds with the subject. Avedon would often stand in the same position as his subjects on a photoshoot, by mirroring the subject’s body language he was able to build a rapport quicker.

It’s something I do unconsciously, I want to know how it feels. I think I want to encourage the thing I like about the way he stands. I want to encourage without words.

American Photo: Avedon, March-April 1994

The Visual Author

Avedon was incredibly versatile, and his method of shooting would change depending on what assignment or project he was shooting at the time. He wouldn’t approach an advertising job the same way as his portraiture, nor his documentary work the same as his fashion photos. 

He was also fearless, and nothing would stop him from making his photographs and doing whatever it would take to fulfill his vision.

So, getting “The Avedon Look” isn’t a case of simply following a formula. First, you’ve got to decide what genre of his photography you’re trying to replicate and then study his work in more detail. If you’ve made it this far in the article, then you’ve probably picked up quite a few hints and tips that will help you out. 

I’m just a born photographer and I get bored. When I get bored, I move to the next place, the one thing about the life that’s fallen on me is that I can when I’ve done too much fashion, stop. When I’ve too much of the deeper more intense and painful part of myself, I can go back to another place. It’s like being a writer who writes on many subjects.

Richard Avedon the Charlie Rose Show (1997)

Other Richard Avedon Resources

Recommended Richard Avedon Books

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• Richard Avedon: Photographs 1946-2004
• Avedon: Evidence: 1944-1994
• Avedon: Fashion 1944-2000
• In the American West, 1979-84
• Avedon at Work: In the American West
• Avedon: Something Personal

Videos of Richard Avedon

Richard Avedon: Darkness and Light (1996)

This must-see documentary film provides a fascinating portrait of Richard Avedon and his incredible body of work.

Not only will you learn how Avedon made his most iconic photos, but you also get to watch the master photographer at work on his fashion and portraits shoots.

Among the documentaries many highlights are Avedon’s recollection of Marilyn Monroe dancing in his studio for hours so that he could capture a never-seen-before side of her persona. Another segment, Avedon describes how Charlie Chaplin called him out of the blue and visited him for a portrait session days before leaving the U.S.

Darkness and Light is a documentary produced by PBS as part of the American Masters Series in 1996. If you have 90 minutes to spare, then I cannot recommend this documentary enough.

Charlie Rose: Richard Avedon (1993)

In this 60-minute interview from May 1993, Richard Avedon talks to the chat show host, Charlie Rose about life behind the lens, photographing public figures and his book, An Auto-biography Richard Avedon. You can learn a lot by listening to Avedon discussing his photography philosophy, most iconic photos and love of the medium.

More Richard Avedon Photos

You can view more Richard Avedon photos here and here

Fact Check

With every profile article we produce, we strive to be accurate and fair. If you see something that doesn’t look right, then contact us and we’ll update the post.

If there is anything else you would like to add about Avedon’s work, his life, his photography techniques or how he has had an impact on you then send us an email: hello(at)photogpedia.com

Link to Photogpedia

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The website was put together by photographers for photographers, so we can all learn from the masters like Richard Avedon. The more links we have to us, the easier it will be for others to find the website.

Finally, don’t forget to subscribe to our monthly newsletter, and follow us on Instagram and Twitter.

Recommended Richard Avedon Links

To see more of Richard Avedon’s work, visit the Avedon Foundation. Also, check out the free Richard Avedon iPad application

Best Interview and Resource Links 

Assisting Avedon – Website of former Assistant Earl Steinbicker 
The Secrets of Avedon and his Legendary Studio
Richard Avedon and Irving Penn Workshop Transcript – Alexey Brodovitch Workshop, Session Notes: Design Laboratory, 1964

Sources

Avedon Foundation
Assisting Avedon, Earl Steinbicker
A Woman Entering a Taxi in the Rain, New Yorker, Winthrop Sargeant, November 1958
Richard Avedon and Irving Penn Workshop Transcript, 1964
The Secrets of Avedon and his Legendary Studio, Bill Shapiro, Ceros, 2019
Tim Walker: ‘There’s an extremity to my interest in beauty, The Guardian, Sept 2019

American Photo March-April 1994
The Contest of Meaning: Critical Histories of Photography (MIT Press)
American Photo September-October 2002
Visual Poetry: A Creative Guide for Making Engaging Digital Photographs, Chris Orwig
American Photo January-February 2005
Annie Leibovitz at Work, Annie Leibovitz, 2008 (Random House)
Regarding Heroes, Yousuf Karsh, David Travis, 2009 (Godine)

An Autobiography, Richard Avedon (Random House)
Avedon: Evidence (Random House)
Avedon: Fashion 1944-2000 (Harry N. Abrams)
In the America West: Richard Avedon (Harry N. Abrams)
Richard Avedon: Woman in the Mirror (Schirmer Mosel)
Avedon: Something Personal, Norma Stevens and Steven M.L. Aronson (Spiegel & Grau)
Avedon at Work: In the American West, Laura Wilson (University of Texas)

American Masters Series: Richard Avedon: Darkness and Light. Helen Whitney. 1996

Charlie Rose Interviews, PBS, 3 x episodes (October 5, 1993, November 1, 1995 and November 26, 1999)

The post Richard Avedon: The Million Dollar Man appeared first on Photogpedia.

With a career spanning five decades, Helmut Newton is regarded as one of the greatest photographers of all-time.

Love his work or hate his work, Newton left the world of photography in a very different state than when he found it. Thanks to his books, documentaries and many interviews, we are lucky enough to learn from his experiences and get a glimpse into his world.

Helmut Newton Quotes Collection

Whether you’re looking for some inspiration, a bit of motivation or just need a quick pick-me-up before a photoshoot, check out these 101 Helmut Newton quotes.

Read them, be inspired by them, and then get out there and make some incredible images with the help of Helmut.

To learn more about Helmut Newton, check out our article: Helmut Newton: The King of Kink

Photography Philosophy

Voyeurism in photography is a necessary and professional sickness. Look at, capture, observe, frame, target. These are the laws of our field. The world is totally different when I look at it through the viewfinder. I always take a step back from what I see through my camera. I use it as a screen.

The point of my photography has always been to challenge myself. To go a little further than my Germanic discipline and Teutonic nature would permit me to. 1996 interview with Salon

I have a very short attention span. That’s why I could never make a movie. For me, any job that lasts more than two days is no good. It was the same when I was a champion swimmer, a hundred meters was the maximum, fifty was much better.

Good photographers are as educated children – they can be seen but not heard.

The first 10,000 shots are the worst. (Cartier Bresson also said this)

Photography is 10% inspiration and 90% moving furniture.

The beauty of photography is that there’s a mystery about it. You’re just dealing with that one moment.

I use what God gives me, but I arrange the world the way I like it .

Taking photographs became the way I coped with things. My wife had a serious operation that upset me: I started photographing her. When I had something wrong with me, I used a camera. It helped. I photographed my doctors, and myself in the hospital mirror. I have a theory that in war, or any trauma if a photographer has a camera between him and the horror, he can face it. If there’s something that upsets me, I get my camera out.”

Helmut Newton Quotes on Style

Look, I’m not an intellectual – I just take pictures.

I have mixed feelings about those sorts of things. When I see it done by interesting young people, I think it’s very valid. But when established photographers, people in their forties, copy me and get a lot of money, well, I find that to be very stupid.

We all copy someone at one time or another life, but then you still need to go its own way.

I work it out very carefully, and then I do something that looks as if it went wrong. This is also why I abandoned Kodachrome, it looks too professional, too fine grain, too perfect, I’d rather get what I call funky color, I don’t mind if it’s all wrong – as long as it’s not too horrible. For the same reasons, I like it when the camera is not quite straight, when something happens that’s not perfect. But of course, I start off with professionalism.

I used to hate doing color. I hated transparency film. The way I did color was by not wanting to know what kind of film was in my camera.

Everything that is beautiful is a fake. The most beautiful lawn is plastic.

Photography as Art

I hate dishonesty in pictures: the disgusting image shot in the name of an artistic principle. Blurry images. Grainy images. Bad technique.

There is no message in my photos. They are quite simple and don’t need any explanation. If by chance they seem a little complex or if you need a while to understand them, it’s simply because they are full of details and that a lot of things are happening. But usually they are very simple.

The desire to discover, the desire to move, to capture the flavor, three concepts that describe the art of photography.

In my vocabulary there are two bad words: art and good taste.

Some people’s photography is an art. Mine is not. If they happen to be exhibited in a gallery or a museum, that`s fine. But that’s not why I do them. I’m a gun for hire.

Art is a dirty word in photography. All this fine art crap is killing it already.

The Work

I only take pictures for money or pleasure.

When I did my first cover for a magazine called The Australian Post, I ran around to all the newspaper stands, with tears in my eyes, to look at it. But it was impossible to live off fashion photography in Australia. So, in order to eat and to survive, I did weddings. I absolutely detested it.

Since the commercialization and banality of editorial magazine pages have made this work uninteresting, advertising has become an increasingly important part of my work.

I worry myself sick, I swear to you, I think every photographer must. When I go off a job, when I drive home or take a plane, I go through it all and keep saying to myself: “I should have done it this way and not that way.

It began when I was so ill that there was a good chance of dying. I promised myself that if I survived I would never again pander to a magazine’s requests or follow the ideas of art directors. I would only make images which were personal, which arose out of my own life.

The beauty of photography is that it’s comparatively cheap to produce, can be done quickly with the minimum of personnel and equipment, and if you screw up one job there is always another one that might work out – also, one does not have to get up early in the morning.

Fashion Photography

I gave up fashion because I wanted to do nudes. Fashion is easier. Fashion hides things. Photographing someone totally naked is very difficult, trying to get skin texture right.

They often ask me to shoot for them. But I say no. I think an old guy like me ought not take pages away from young photographers who need the exposure.

What I find interesting is working in a society with certain taboos – and fashion photography is about that kind of society. To have taboos, then to get around them – that is interesting.

I think a fashion photograph is almost a social document that will take you back. The older it gets, the more interesting it is. It shows you how people lived. In my pictures, anyway.

I had found out that I did not function well in the studio, that my imagination needed the reality of the outdoors. I also realized that only as a fashion photographer could I create my kind of universe and take up my camera in the chic place and in what the locals called la zone, which were working-class districts, construction sites, and so on. To work for French Vogue at that time was wonderful: Who else would have published these nudes or the crazy and sexually charged fashion photographs which I would submit to the editor in chief?

Helmut Newton on Portraits

My job as a portrait photographer is to seduce, amuse and entertain.

When I do a portrait, I don’t think of an idea, I feel a great relaxation, though it may be difficult psychologically. Starting to work this way has been like a weight falling off my mind, all of a sudden I felt free.

To this question, “What people do you like to photograph?” my answer is “Those I love, those I admire, and those I hate.

I like photographing the people I love, the people I admire, the famous, and especially the infamous. My last infamous subject was the extreme right-wing French politician Jean-Marie Le Pen.

It’s quite true that what I am aiming at, even when I take portraits, is to get a scandalous picture. I would love to be a paparazzo.

Most of my work is meant to be funny. Because I’m quite timid myself, I try to determine whether my subject will be receptive to a wild idea before I suggest anything. I would never force anybody to do anything. I never push very far. I think subjects pose so openly for me because I inspire confidence or because I’m older than most of them.

With portraits, it’s important to intrude. I’m an admirer of paparazzi – that’s the ultimate intrusion. But I ask my subjects to present themselves in front of my camera. I think it’s important if you do a portrait… I will obviously decide how I photograph it, the place and the situation, but it’s very important that I don’t make this person into another person.

There is a difference between models and real people. It’s very different working with somebody you pay or doing a portrait of a personality, like an actress. Actresses are fragile in front of the camera, all women are, but actresses more so. I understand them perfectly well, they have so much to protect, so they are insecure. When you like somebody and you want to get a good picture of her you’ve got to tread very carefully. That’s why I wouldn’t let anybody, not even June, photograph me during such a sitting.

Sometimes I think : “I’ve got it”, but sometimes I just brake up because I can’t go on anymore, even if I haven’t got it because I don’t know how to do any better. I just say: “It’s no good flogging a dead horse.” The case of that picture was exceptional, I think it happened very late in the sitting. And it was the only one.

Helmut Newton Quotes On the Process

I spend a lot of time preparing. I think a lot about what I want to do. I have prep books, little notebooks in which I write everything down before a sitting. Otherwise I would forget my ideas.

I have a notebook where I write down all my thoughts: the ideas, models and locations. If I don’t write it down, then I forget everything.

Sometimes I’ll say to a model, “Look dangerous, be dangerous” I talk to myself like a dog, sometimes I talk loud

People like Polaroids, because they’re unique. There are no negatives. You’ve got it once and no more. That’s the charm and fascination about Polaroids – that they can’t be duplicated.

My photos are like stories that have no beginning, no middle and no end.

Locations

I don’t like white paper backgrounds. A woman does not live in front of white paper. She lives on the street, in a motor car, in a hotel room.

Sometimes it happens, not very often, that God chooses to give me that ray of sunshine or that cloud, at the right moment. That’s why I work outside because I know that in the studio, God can’t do anything for me, all he could do would be to send a thunderstorm that cuts off the electricity. Outside he can help me, he could also fuck me up by sending a lot of rain, that would make it difficult, but he very rarely sends me light that’s no good to me. Practically any light, somehow or other, I can deal with.

I have always avoided photographing in the studio. A woman does not spend her life sitting or standing in front of a seamless white paper background. Although it makes my life more complicated, I prefer to take my camera out into the street… and places that are out of bounds for photographers have always had a special attraction for me.

I think night gives a very mysterious quality to a woman in the street. I love that.

In the photographs themselves there’s a definite contrast between the figures and the location – I like that kind of California backyard look; clapboard houses, staircases outdoors.

I am very lazy. I hate to look for places for filming and never shoot further than three kilometers from the hotel.

Hotels

I love all hotels. From sumptuous, old, palatial hotels like the Ritz to modern, depressing, cold buildings. A hotel is practical. It costs less to rent an entire floor of a hotel than to rent a studio.

When I photograph in a hotel or a studio, I am always up against the wall. I don’t like the studio. I hate walls, and I’m not at ease except outdoors.

Helmut Newton on Lighting

My work is very realistic. Nothing computer-generated. I never work with electric light, only natural. Look at my pictures and you’ll see none of them has been manipulated in the dark room. I just expose the negative and it gets printed straight. It’s what you might call ‘old-fashioned photography’.

Growing up, I was surrounded by Nazi imagery, like everybody in Germany, and for a boy obsessed with photography it left an indelible impression on me.

Shooting in the Brelin underground [subway] stations. Even today I love photographing by the light of street lamps or in the glare of my flash.

My wife was an actress when I met her. I photographed her productions. I love stage lighting. I was brought up with twenties and thirties American cinema lighting. The Marlene Dietrich look. I like hard light, which throws deep shadow on the face. Most photographers shun the midday sun: they like softness, twilight. I call that the shitty hour. I love the desert, when the sun is high and unforgiving in the sky. Thirties portraits of women with long lashes which throw black shadows on the cheek. I’ve just done Jude Law like that, in heavy shadow.

George Hurrell, I admire enormously – wonderful lighting. He became a great friend. I [also] loved Josef von Sternberg’s lighting of Dietrich in Shanghai Express.

Helmut Newton Quotes On Equipment

I always kept my equipment down to a minimum of two cameras, each with three lenses, a flash that would clip onto the camera body, and one assistant. I did not want to spend time thinking about hardware; I wanted that time to concentrate on the girl and the world around her.

Technically, I have not changed very much. Ask my assistants. They’ll tell you, I am the easiest photographer to work with. I don’t have heavy equipment. I shoot with a 35mm Canon and work out of one bag . Ninety-percent of the time it’s on automatic. I even use the flash that’s on the camera. It’s really an amateur’s equipment.

Recently I tried a Leica CL. It’s a marvelous camera, but I can’t use it. I don’t feel my images through its viewfinder.

Did you see the last series I did for American Vogue, the bathing suits? They were done in a very big studio in Hollywood. They set up all these sophisticated, very professional lights. But I said, “Get rid of them.” I used my 35mm camera and flash. I generally use very, very little lighting.

Helmut on Editing

I always show my photographs to June. I make a choice and she makes one, sometimes we agree, more often we are totally opposed. But she is an excellent editor, while I really hate editing, I think it’s boring.

What I find very interesting is that when I get my contact sheets back from the lab, I would choose one shot, but when I look at it a year later something else will interest me.

That’s why one must never throw anything away. Everything changes, your whole idea about things changes, at least mine does. I do have certain taboos. But these also change, they get less and less as I get older. I look at things in an entirely different way today than I did five years ago.

I was lucky to have my wife as the art director, and it turned out to be quite something – a great success. I’m very proud of it.

And there is another thing that I think is important. You tend to go in close. Well, I pull back. Back, back, back. Because I found that what worried me when I took the picture, some car going by, some persons, something in the background that shouldn’t be there, has become fascinating years later because it’s part of the time captured.

Being Controversial

I shot for Playboy magazine for twenty years, and even my work for them sometimes were too risky.

All that sadomasochism still looks interesting to me today. I always carry chains and padlocks in my car trunk, not for me but for my photos – by the way, I never make the knots real tight.

[What do you say to critics who say your work is misogynistic?] They are silly! First of all, why would I spend my life with women, whether they are dressed or undressed, if I didn’t like women? Another thing is that in all the photographs, the women are triumphant and the men are just toys. They are just accessories and always servile to the women.

I don’t think sex should be fun. Sex is deadly serious. Otherwise it’s not sexy. To me there’s got to be a great element of sin to get people all excited. I don’t see any fun. That’s an American attitude, fun in sex.

I am very attracted by bad taste-it is a lot more exciting than that supposed good taste which is nothing more than a standardized way of looking at things.

In Hollywood last year, I spent 12 hours in a porn-movie company. I found it comical, but not a turn-on.

Photographing Women

There must be a certain look of availability in the women I photograph. I think the woman who gives the appearance of being available is sexually much more exciting than a woman who’s completely distant. This sense of availability I find erotic.

But I like a certain cold look. Because I hate sentimentality and romanticism. I like romanticism in my landscapes but not in women.

The right girl, at the right time, has always been my inspiration.

I hate sentimentality and romanticism. You should feel that, under the right conditions, all women would be available.

I like photographing women who appear to know something of life. I recently did a session with a great beauty, a movie star in her thirties. I photographed her twice within three weeks and the second time I said: “You’re much more beautiful today than you were three weeks ago.” And she replied: “But I’m also three weeks older.”

My women are always victorious.

In the early sixties, the women had a waist. And in the eighties there were Swedish, German and American models – they were stacked like truckers, and I loved it.

[On what makes a woman sexy] Ah! I think it’s nothing to do with beauty. It’s nothing to do with if she has big boobs, little boobs or no boobs. I think it all goes through the head. It’s intellect. I think that what goes on in the head of a woman is much more important than whether she’s blonde or brunette or whatever.

Bourgeois women are more erotic than a hairdresser or a secretary. Elegance, education, environment – I believe in these things, I sometimes feel ashamed for it, but it’s true. Woman of high society are sexy in nature.

Women I shoot are available, but their availability depends on the time and money you can spend on them.

Working with Models

My camera is often low because I like the illusion of looking up. I like superwomen, physically strong and masterful.

Women assume marvelous expressions when they look at themselves. They lose themselves in their own image. It’s fascinating to observe and shoot. It really inspires me physically and mentally.

The women you see in my photographs, are my ideal women. The less I know of them, the better. The more I know, the more disillusioned I become. I lose the glamour, the aura, the illusion of beauty.

In a particular photo one girl has a whip clenched between her teeth. She looked great. But I think Mr. Hermes had a fit when he saw the photos.

I’ve always loved cowboys – how they look, go. Do cowboy hands are always ready to grab the gun. So I do the cowboys of the girls who are always ready to grab the gun.

Editor note: In the video below Helmut explains the gunfighter stance.

Helmut on Nudes

It was not until 1980 that I photographed what I consider to be my first nude. In quick succession, I executed the Big Nudes, the Naked and Dressed, and, in Los Angeles, the Domestic Nudes series. The fact that the models in these photographs were the same girls I used in my fashion work gave them a certain elegance and coolness that I was looking for in my work.

I was never interested in naked men. I’ve done quite a lot of nudes of myself. When I’m in a hotel room and bored I’ll get a camera and shoot myself in the mirror. But I haven’t shown many and I’m getting a bit old for that.

The photographs don’t arouse me. All I can think about is the hard work it took to make them.

A nude model when she’s nude, she is stripped of everything, she’s either got it or she hasn’t got it, there’s nothing much I can add on to it. But what is interesting it to take a woman who is totally covered by fashion, is to maybe see something which one shouldn’t see.

Final Words

Which of these Helmut Newton quotes was your favorite? Let us know in the comment section below.

To learn about the more about Helmut Newton and his work, then I recommend reading our blog post: Helmut Newton: The King of Kink

Enjoy this post? Then share it on your own blogs, Twitter, Pinterest, etc so it can help other photographers out there.

Also, bookmark these Helmut Newton quotes for the next time you’re in need of a bit of inspiration.

The post The Best 101 Helmut Newton Quotes appeared first on Photogpedia.

This Complete Guide to Helmut Newton is the ultimate resource for anyone looking for information about the legendary photographer and his work.

There have been thousands of websites that have written about Newton, but to find truly great content takes a lot of searching and many wasted hours (even wasted days).

After extensive research, I’ve compiled everything I could find out about Newton and his career into one easy to read post.

If there’s anything you want to know about Helmut Newton, you’re guaranteed to find it in the article below.

This is the most comprehensive and definitive guide on Helmut Newton that you’ll ever read on the internet. Period.

If you enjoy reading it, then I would be grateful if you could share it, so other photographers like you can also enjoy the article.

This will be quite long, so make yourself a drink or grab a beer and sit back and enjoy the read.

If you don’t have time to read the full article now (around 25 minutes), then bookmark the page and read it a section at a time.

Alternatively, feel free to use the table of contents below, to skip ahead to whatever section interests you.

Related: The Best 101 Helmut Newton Quotes

Editor Note: This article took 14 days to research and write. Sharing the website or linking back to us takes less than a minute and costs you absolutely nothing. To show your appreciation, I would be extremely grateful if you could share the website through social media or photography forums, or even link back to Photogpedia on your own blog or portfolio website (every link counts). Thank you for your support.

Biography

Name: Helmut Newton (Neustädter)
Nationality: German/Australian Photographer
Genre: Fashion, Commercial, Nude, Eroticism
Born: October 31, 1920 – Berlin, Germany
Died: January 23, 2004 – Los Angeles, United States

Introduction

Dubbed the ‘King of Kink’ by Time Magazine in 1976, Newton was a prolific photographer and pioneer, whose daring work bought him both fame and notoriety.

In the 1970s, his work for Vogue, Vanity Fair and Elle revolutionized fashion photography and paved the way for contemporary photography to become more creative and risky.

Incorporating complex themes of sexuality in his work and shooting on location, he showed that fashion photography didn’t have to be safe and confined to the studio.

His bold, seductive and controversial style continues to influence many brands, photographers and advertisers today.  

Sixteen years after his death, he remains a major influence on photography and the visual art world.

Who Is Helmut Newton?

Where to begin…

A master of the craft and genuine visionary, Newton was one of a few photographers who transformed fashion photography and advertising into what can be considered an art form.

Building on major avant-garde art movements of the 20th century, he blended themes of voyeurism and glamour to create a style that has since become an everyday part of the fashion landscape.

Pushing the Envelope

He began as a fashion photographer who pushed the boundaries of what was deemed acceptable at the time for editors, then pushed them even further in his personal work.

He challenged taboos and preferred his models tall and posed with precision and attitude, playing the part of out-of-reach goddesses.

He photographed some of the most beautiful women in the world in poses that emphasized their sexuality, often with an accompanying sense of danger and violence.

His dreamlike and erotic photos were like peeping through a keyhole, spied moments of heightened reality.

Watch this behind the scenes video from Helmut by June to see for yourself.

Visual Storyteller

When you look at a Newton photograph, it’s like seeing a frame from the middle of a movie and wondering what will happen next.

As Wallis Annenberg put it:

If Newton’s work was controversial, I believe it’s because he expressed the contradictions within all of us, and particularly within the women he photographed so beautifully: empowerment mixed with vulnerability, sensuality tempered by depravity. Newton deepened our understanding of changing gender roles, of the ways in which beauty creates its own kind of power and corruption. On top of that, his compositions were brilliantly precise, cinematic in their scope and in their storytelling.

In his career, Newton worked with Vogue, Vanity Fair, Elle, Nova and Playboy, shooting over 60 covers for Vogue Paris alone.

His provocative, erotically charged photos were a mainstay of Vogue and other publications during the sexual revolution of the 1960s and ‘70s.

During this 20-year period, his work reached millions of readers.

Gun for Hire

He also worked in advertising, shooting various campaigns for the likes of Yves Saint Laurent, Chanel and Versace as well as non-fashion brands such as BMW and Absolute Vodka.

As his career developed and his reputation grew, he began taking portraits of celebrities for magazines and has photographed everyone from David Lynch and Madonna to Margaret Thatcher and Leonardo DiCaprio.

Today, his photographs are some of the most valuable around (his famous, Sie Kommen sold for $670,000 in 2016 at Sotheby’s New York) and a rare version of his book Sumo is one of the most expensive photography books to go under the hammer, selling for $430,000.

Early Life

Helmut Neustädter (he later changed his name to Newton) was born on the 31^st of October 1920 into a prosperous Jewish family in Weimar, Berlin. His mother Klara was a widow with a son, Hans when she married Helmut’s father, Max. 

Max was a soldier from Silesia before marrying Klara. He later went on to take over the running of the button factory left behind by Klara’s late husband.

Although Jewish by descent, they celebrated Christmas rather than Hanukkah and neither Helmut nor his half-brother Hans had a Bar Mitzvah.

Newton’s liking for the unusual, particularly in sexual contexts, is attributed to his early years.

At 8 years old, his older brother showed him the ‘gutter of Berlin’, which was inhabited by prostitutes like ‘Red Erma’, who wore thigh-high boots and carried a whip. Helmut recalls, “my eyes were poppin’ out of my head.”

This early exposure would later lead him to create photographic studies that altered the course of fashion photography.

Enter Photography

From the age of 12, when he saved up enough money to buy a Box Brownie, he wanted to be a photographer. The first roll of film he ever shot was at an underground subway. The whole roll came back black except for the one image he shot above ground.

He attended the Heinrich von Treitschke Real Gymnasium and later the American School in Berlin, where he was often truant, already more interested in photography than his academic studies.

In love with Marlene Dietrich, so he said, from the time he attended the American School, he met her many years later when they were both in New York and he was to take her portrait.

The meeting was not a success – she took offense to a light-hearted comment by Newton – and the portrait was never taken.

The Young Rebel

A rebel at the age of fourteen, encouraged by the confidence of family wealth and the decadence of Berlin society of the 1930s, Helmut Newton dangerously flaunted the Nuremberg racial laws of 1934 and fell in love with an Aryan girl.

Newton later said, “I was pretty much awake to it but didn’t give a shit one way or the other.”

At fourteen I took pictures of my childhood girlfriends in the streets, dressed in my mother’s dresses and hats. It was then that I swore to myself that I would later become a fashion photographer at Vogue.

Helmut Newton – 1976 April/May issue of Penthouse Photo World

On his own account, Helmut excelled at only three subjects during his teenage years: swimming, photography and sex.

My grades, in school, were deplorable, I was a dunce. Since my classes ended at 1 PM when I was fourteen years old, I got a job as an assistant to a photographer without telling my parents. This lasted for six months. My school grades became worse and worse; So finally, my father confiscated all my cameras and confined me to the house. By the time I was sixteen, my parents no longer had any hope.

Helmut Newton – 1976 April/May issue of Penthouse Photo World

Helmut the Apprentice

In 1936, at the age of 16, he managed to persuade his father to allow him to pursue a career in photography. “You’ll end up in the gutter,” his father warned. “I’m still not far from the gutter, I’m glad to say,” Newton reflected towards the end of his life. “I like it down there.”

He secured an apprenticeship with the popular portrait and theatrical photographer, Else Ernestine Neuländer-Simon, known professionally as Yva.

German-Jewish Yva had a reputation for innovation and was a regular exhibitor at international photography exhibitions, including, daringly for a woman at the time, the International Salon of nude photography in Paris.

She experimented with a multiple exposure technique, creating surreal, dream-like effects current with the German avant-garde, and paving the way for the emergence of a new vision of femininity.

An important influence during his formative years as a photographer, he remained with her for two years.

World War II

Unfortunately, hoping things would change in Germany, she decided against leaving as the Nazi’s took power. She ended up being deprived of her studio and was killed in the Majdanek concentration camp in December 1944.

The situation in Berlin became increasingly more dangerous for Jews, and in 1938, following Kristallnacht, Newton’s father was briefly imprisoned in a concentration camp. 

No longer able to ignore the change of political climate in Germany, Helmut’s father was forced to abandon the factory and the family emigrated to South America.

Helmut, who at the time was 18, could not get a visa and was sent instead to China.

At Trieste, he boarded the ‘Conte Rosso’ (along with about 200 others escaping the Nazis) intending to journey to China. Taking with him a small bag of belongings and two still cameras, he instead got off in Singapore.

Going It Alone

In Singapore, he worked as a photographer for the Strait Times (lasting only two weeks) and then as a portrait photographer.

When I was 18, I was in Singapore and flat broke. The Singapore Straight Times offered me a job as a reporter. I had a beat-up Rolleiflex, but every time there was something to take a photo about, I got there too late. After two weeks they fired me, and for a long time I didn’t have any money.

From Helmut Newton by Helmut Newton

According to his autobiography, he worked also as a gigolo, or, at least the kept plaything for a much-older rich French divorcée.

During this time, Helmut photographed society parties in the British colony of Singapore. As he still had a German passport, he was interned by the British in 1940 as a ‘friendly enemy alien’ and sent to Australia on board the Queen Mary.

Down Under

Arriving in Sydney in September 1940 he was taken to an internment camp in Tatura, Victoria, where he remained until 1942.

After his release, following a few weeks of casual work as a fruit picker, he enlisted as a truck driver in the Australian army during World War II. 

After the end of the war, he became an Australian citizen and changed his name to Newton. He then decided to follow his dream, opening his first photography studio in 1946 determined to make a living as a photographer.

In 1946, Newton set up shop in fashionable Flinders Lane in Melbourne and worked in fashion and theatre photography in the affluent post-war years.

June

During this time, he met an actress June F Browne, who performed under the stage name June Brunell. Two years later Browne and Newton married. This partnership that would last a lifetime.

When he proposed to June, he told her, “We would never be rich, we’d always be poor and that photography would always be my first love, and you would be my second.”

Her influence seems to have been considerable: the notion of an actress as a model is hardly a new one, but Browne’s collaboration with Newton, on both sides of the camera, was substantial and she became his trusted editor and inspiration for the rest of their life together.

Browne later became a successful photographer under the pseudonym Alice Springs (after Alice Springs, the Australian town.)

Eighteen years after fleeing Germany, at the age of 36, he landed his first commission with Vogue, leading him to the path that would see him become one of the fashion photography industry’s finest artists.

Photography Career

Early Period

Newton’s early photography work was standard for the time. Like most photographers starting out, he would take any job that he could get including weddings, catalog assignments and even baby books.

For several years, Newton worked tirelessly and over time his reputation eventually grew.

In the mid-50s his hard work paid off when he secured himself a commission at Australian Vogue magazine.

In 1956, Newton partnered with fellow German refugee, Henry Talbot, and changed his studio name to Helmut Newton and Henry Talbot. The pair specialized in fashion and advertising photography. They continued their partnership even after Newton left for Europe.

London Calling

After living in Australia for fifteen years, he was yearning to return to Europe and explore opportunities abroad. His work at Australian Vogue won him a 12-month contract with British Vogue and in February 1957, Helmut and June moved to London.

My years in Australia were wonderful. I met June, we married, but photographically, as much as I loved this country and its people, it did not form me as a photographer nor did my work there amount to anything.

His time with British Vogue was in his own words “boring.”  Newton thought he took the worst pictures of his life, owing largely to the British conservative views and lack of talent for sex. He left for Paris before his contract was up.

Bonjour Paris

The day I arrived in Paris, it was love at first sight. I knew that I would live in this city. In a week, I could get around Paris with my eyes covered. But by the end of a year, I had no more money. I was hardly working. The editorial pages of fashion magazines paid badly and my photographs were not good.

After short spells working for French and German fashion magazines, and a return to Australian Vogue in 1959 for two years, Helmut again returned to Paris in 1961, taking up residence in the fashionable district of La Marais.

The moment I hit Paris I knew this was it for living and taking photographs. The life was in the streets, in cafes, restaurants. Beautiful women seemed to be everywhere.

It is there that he made the iconic portrait of a woman wearing a Yves Saint Laurent tuxedo, nicknamed Le Smoking.

Going International

From this new locale, his work appeared internationally in magazines such as Elle, French Vogue, Jardin des Modes, Harper’s Bazaar, Nova and Playboy.

His full-time contract with French Vogue, together with commissions from other magazines such as British Vogue and Queen, gave Helmut the financial freedom to explore his own vision for fashion photography.

It was his body of work during this period which established his reputation as a world-renowned fashion photographer.

Under the Influence

Yet no matter where he was shooting, Newton always brought a 1920s Berlin sensibility to his photography, where smoky nostalgia and decadence were seen in every film, cabaret or song of the day.

He was also inspired by the work of Brassaï and his innovative street photography, and portraits of the rich and famous.

Newton replaced the reserved and objectified images of models with women who exuded confidence and sexuality and weren’t afraid to use it as a means of dominance in a man’s world.

His photos were gritty, in your face and a complete contrast to fashion photos of the past.

This departure proved successful, attracting assignments from elite fashion magazines of the day.

The editor-in-chief of French Vogue, Francine Crescent, was a champion of his new vision following her appointment in 1968.

Combining the glamour and decadence of high fashion, along with erotically charged voyeurism against a cinematic backdrop, made the clothes seem unattainably desirable and emphasized the equally unattainable femininity of the models.

American Vogue

Although Newton worked on several assignments for American Vogue, his style of photography failed to impress Diana Vreeland, the then editor of American Vogue, who preferred a glamorized and glossy look, and he decided to call it quits and return to Paris.

Mrs. Vreeland’s vision was one of fantasia, Moroccan extravaganzas, rouged heels – yes! – and dreams of exotica. Mine was a highly sexual woman, in all respects Western, whose native habitat was Paris, Milan, and maybe New York.

He finally made his return to its pages in 1971, shortly after Ms. Vreeland was fired.

The world of fashion photography was changing, and Helmut Newton would lead the change for the next two decades.

Mature Period

In 1971 while working on a Vogue assignment in New York, Helmut suffered a major heart attack that would change his life. This near-death experience made him reassess his photography and his work took on a whole new direction.

With encouragement from June, Helmut began concentrating on his nudes and portraits.

He pursued sexual themes, taking pictures “from inside himself” based on memories of his youth in Berlin, introducing a menacing edge to his work.

This change brought him to the forefront of fashion photography and made him one of the most influential figures in his field during the 1970s.

Related Article: 101 Helmut Newton Quotes

The Look

Women were pictured bolder, more confident and more aggressive; usually in disturbing situations, photographed in a gritty, realistic reportage style.

Models were often depicted as members of the social elite, ‘caught’ in seedy environments exploring kinky fantasies.

Some of Newton’s most iconic photo stories were done with Vogue fashion director Polly Mellen. For the December 74 issue, Newton and Mellen went to the island of Maui to shoot the story Hawaii – Adventures in Sundressing.

Newton posed future supermodel Cheryl Tiegs with a then-unknown actress Rene Russo. The pair danced to the sound of a phonograph on the edge of the Haleakala crater.

Storm of Controversy

For the time, the lesbian overtones in the picture were scandalous, and readers reactions were divided. The photo story received praise from some readers, while others canceled their subscriptions.

One thing can be said for Helmut, was that he enjoyed a succés de scandale, whether photographing a German model as a Russian spy by the Berlin War, or fashion models posed wearing a saddle or representing women as men.

The term ‘political correctness’ has always appalled me, reminding me of Orwell’s ‘thought police’ and fascist regimes.

Newton on censorship in America

During the 70s actress, Charlotte Rampling famously posed naked for him in a portrait for Playboy. He continued his association with Playboy magazine for a 30-year period.

Portraits

Also, that decade, he photographed a number of controversial political figures, including French politician Jean-Marie Le Pen, and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, of whom he said, “As she became more successful and more powerful, she seemed to me to become even sexy.”

With his portrait work, Helmut had the ability to convey the true character of the sitter through a single frame. His portraits were powerful, yet full of contradictions that bring us closer to these seemingly untouchable people.

As Helmut put it: “My job is to seduce, amuse and entertain,” a philosophy which is evident in much of his portrait work.

Portraiture commissions, many of which were published in Vanity Fair, continued throughout the 1980s.

Helmut published his first book ‘White Women’ in 1976, which featured the most radical selections from this period. Despite negative reviews in the US it still managed to sell 1500 copies in the first week there.

Hollywood Years

The Hollywood film The Eyes of Laura Mars starring Faye Dunaway was inspired by Helmut’s photos. Ironically, the photos he contributed to the film were rejected as the director of the film wanted more blood and corpses, which were of no interest to Helmut.

In 1981, Helmut and June left Paris for warmer climates of Monte Carlo in the South of France where they would spend their summer months, returning to Los Angeles in winter.

Towards the latter part of his life, Newton continued to work for advertising clients and publications, including Vanity Fair and Vogue.

Commissions were never in short supply for Helmut, yet despite the busy work schedule, he always found time to take the photographs he wanted to and complete various personal projects.

Check out this behind the scenes video of Helmut on a photoshoot for Vogue in 1991.

Photographic Style

Helmut Newton was a visionary photography who popularised edgy, often racy fashion photos that were inspired by film noir and surrealism.

His photographs were stylized essays in erotica and fantasy. They were dangerous, voyeuristic and provocative but always elegant.

To Newton, fashion meant more than the clothes and models. He focussed on the concept, the story, as well as making the viewer feel an emotional connection to the image.

I still believe that the perfect fashion photograph is a photograph that does not look like a fashion photograph. It’s a photograph that looks like something out of a movie, like a portrait, maybe a souvenir shot, maybe a paparazzi shot, anything but a fashion photograph.

His lighting was contrasty and bold, making use of practical’s and simple lighting techniques such as one flash or a torch (or even car headlights).

As a result, his photographs look more realistic and his compositions arresting.

Influences

He has often borrowed from cinema, journalism, erotica and art.

Newton’s appreciation for the cinema, particularly Film Noir (Dark Film), is evident in his use of low-key lighting, seductive women, black and white film and mysterious narrative elements.

“A woman does not live in front of a white paper” he said, in reference to the studio, “she lives on the street, in a motor car, in a hotel room.” By bringing a journalistic element into his photography, he infused his photographs with human interest.

His work was influenced by his early years in the 1930s, wandering the streets of Berlin with a camera in hand.

He has cited that street photographer Brassai, the German photographer Dr. Erich Salomon (who was one of the first paparazzo) and film director Erich von Stroheim as influences on his work and photographic style.

Brassai inspired me with his pictures of Paris by night. I thought those pictures were incredibly beautiful. I started doing a lot of fashion pictures at night in Paris, and since I’ve been in Monte Carlo I’ve been doing the same here. Night gives a very mysterious quality to a woman in the street. I love that.

Other Photographers Work He Liked

Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Baron de Meyer, Edward Steichen, William Klein, Weegee, August Sander, George Hurrell and Jacques Henri Lartigue.

Working with Models

Whilst other photographers, such as Irving Penn and Richard Avedon moved fashion photography to a more glamorous, artful presentation often working with celebrities.

Newton instead preferred tall and powerful lesser-known models that could form to the image he had in his head.

Central to his work were women and underlying themes such as power, eroticism and desire. His models projected a mixture of distance and availability.

Helmut was very clear that he liked a big girl and blond girl, in an impeccable suit and high heels. He would take that girl and put her in some wicked or naughty situation, kissing another woman or in handcuffs.

Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of Vogue

Portrait Work

Of course, Newton didn’t just shoot fashion and beautiful women, he was also acclaimed for his portrait work, photographing celebrities from film, politics, music and popular culture.

Having once remarked that “portraits are an extraordinary seduction.”

Newton photographed everyone from Leonardo DiCaprio to Angelina Jolie to Margaret Thatcher and Sophia Loren.

For Time magazine, Salvador Dalí, requested that Helmut took his photograph prior to his death.

The King of Kink

Following the release of his erotic book, White Women in 1976, Time magazine gave Newton the nickname, ‘The King of Kink’.

 If a photographer says he is not a voyeur, he is an idiot.

Helmut Newton

His photographs of women, while often erotically charged, are never demeaning, and are often almost worshipful of their power and sexuality.  His work in various fashion magazines was the first to show nude women as empowered and triumphant.

Newton’s work was not without controversy, but one thing is for sure, he remained uncompromising in his vision until the day he died.

Legacy

Helmut Newton’s photography took eroticism off the top shelf and into the mainstream, changing the look of fashion photography forever.

When Newton began his career in the late 1940s, fashion photography was safe and conventional.

It would have been easy for Helmut to follow the pack and do the same unoriginal work of others, instead he followed his instincts and went in a new direction. Similar to what Picasso did with art.

The result was a body of work that redefined fashion photography and inspired future generations of photographers.

In today’s #metoo environment, Newton’s photos could be considered exploitive and objectifying. The reality is, his photos are evocative, empowering, mysterious, timeless and most of all, beautiful.

He left an indelible mark on the world of photography and helped turn photography into an art form.

His legacy will live on, and the name Helmut Newton will forever be stamped in the history books as one of the greatest photographers of all time.

How did Helmut Newton Die?

Helmut Newton died at the age of 83, as a result of an automobile accident.

Like a narrative from one of his photographs, even his death was remarkable, going out in 2004 in the style of a James Dean.

After suffering a heart attack at the wheel, Helmut lost control of his Cadillac Escalade SUV, and crashed into a wall on Sunset Boulevard, next to the Chateau Marmont Hotel, where he lived in California.

Although June survived the crash, the accident proved to be fatal for Helmut and he passed away on the 23^rd of January 2004.

His ashes are buried in his home city of Berlin.

Recognition and Awards

With his reputation firmly established as one of the greatest photographers of the twentieth century, Newton received countless awards in recognition of his contribution to the world of fashion, as well as art and photography.

Here’s a few of them:

• Kodak Award for Photographic Books
• Best Photography Award from the ‘Art Director’s Club’ in Tokyo (1976)
• American Institute of Graphic Arts Award (1977)
• Life Legend Award for Lifetime Achievement in Magazine Photography (1999)

In 2003, Newton donated a large collection of photos to the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation in Berlin, the land of his birth. The collection remains there today.

Also, in 2003, a few months before his death, Newton along with his wife June established the Helmut Newton Foundation in Berlin.

The museum is dedicated to preservation and promotion of his own work, along with June’s and is without a doubt worth the visit if you’re ever in Germany.

Sumo

In 1999, Taschen publishing produced a limited-edition book showcasing Newton’s work in fashion and celebrity photography.

Titled Sumo, the 480-page book weighed in at 30kg (66-pounds) and measured 50cm by 70cm (20 in × 28 in).

The book which was signed and numbered by Helmut was initially priced at $1,500, with only 10,000 copies available.

Due to the size and weight of the book, a bespoke stand was designed by French designer and architect Phillipe Starck to support it.

The first copy of Sumo was signed by 80 of the celebrities featured in it including David Lynch, Cindy Crawford and Sigourney Weaver.

This book was sold at auction in Berlin in August 2000 for a whopping $430,000, making it the most expensive book of the 20th century.

A revised edition, edited by June was released in 2009. Although still a huge book, it was much smaller than the original.

The revised version of Sumo can still be purchased on Amazon.

A preview of the book is available on the Taschen Website.

Newton Facts

• Newton’s work inspired the term ‘Porno Chic’.
• Helmut Newton was color blind and couldn’t differentiate between green and blue.
• Whilst developing the script for the film, Eyes Wide Shut, Stanley Kubrick handed a copy of Newton’s book to the scriptwriter, intended as inspiration.
• The Newton Bar in Berlin was named after Helmut. You can sip a cocktail or enjoy a beer set against the dramatic backdrop of his celebrated ‘Big Nudes’ covering the wall.
• Helmut visited the set of the Francis Ford Coppola film, Dracula for a day and took some publicity stills.
• Actor Brad Pitt owns several copies of Newton’s book, Sumo.

What Camera Did Helmut Newton Use?

With a career spanning over fifty years, Newton experimented with many cameras. After days of research, here are my findings.

The first camera he owned at the age of 12 was a Box Brownie made by Eastman Kodak.

Early in his career, during his Australian days, he used a 10×8 camera with glass plates.

Newton recalls, “The shutter was like a blind that you opened by pulling on a string. Because of retouching, you could only use the large format. Even the 120 of the Rollei was considered too small.”

Since then Newton settled on a Rolleiflex 2.8 for the majority of his work, although he has used just about whatever camera was handed to him, trying to keep his setup as simple as possible.

He owned a Hasselblad 500 but didn’t like to use it as he found it too heavy and too noisy, opting to only use it for studio and commissioned shoots.

Other cameras Newton used over five decades include: 4×5 Graflex Super D, Plaubel Makina 67,  Instamatic, Fuji 645, Olympus OM1, Olympus OM2, Nikon FM2, Konica, Pentax-ME, Polaroid, Canon EOS 5, Canon EOS 100 (in his autofocus days) and Olympus Stylus Epic ‘MJU II’ (for casual snapshots.)

Keeping it Simple

What’s noticeable about Newton’s practice is his minimalist approach to the medium. Since starting off as a professional, his camera gear has got smaller and smaller.

I think things are complicated enough without making them more so, I think this is why my technical equipment is very simple, very basic because it gives me more time to work with the girl which is the most important thing.

He once revealed that his equipment composed of just ‘four bodies, five lenses, a strobe light, and a Polaroid, all of which could fit into one bag that weighed less than 40 pounds’. This, he said, allowed him to take pictures anywhere.

What About Focal Length?

Newton has said that he considers 40mm the “perfect focal length,” although a lot of his work is shot using the Rollei and Hasselblad and standard 80mm prime lenses (the equivalent of 50mm in 35mm photography.)

From some of the photos I’ve studied, the notes state that he used his Nikon FM2 with a 50mm F1.4 AI-S.

Although in other interviews, he has said that he likes to use the longest lens possible, but one that allows him to maintain contact with his subject.

Film and Development Process

Newton worked primarily with black and white film, mainly shooting Kodak Tri-X, TMax 100 and TMax 400. For color, he used whatever was available including cheap film from the drugstore, as well as Kodachrome II and Ektachrome X under special conditions.

Typically, he would shoot film at box speed but occasionally when using something like Tri-X he would rate the film at 200 and process as normal.

He wasn’t fond of printing and would rather have his films processed by the lab, so he could spend more time on photoshoots and coming up with ideas.

Marc Picot (Newton’s printer) used HC110, but it might also be that Newton preferred D-76 or even Rodinal. He disliked underexposed and underdevelopment film (thin negatives) and preferred his film to be developed a little longer than recommended, which increased the contrast of the images.

How Do You Get the Helmut Newton Look?

Be born Helmut Newton.

In all honesty, story and composition are more important than any technical aspect of the photograph or what camera he used.

Picking up a film camera, loaded with Kodak Tri-X and developing it in Kodak HC110 will give you a good start. After that, it’s up to you to learn to light and come up with an interesting concept involving an Amazonian blonde in a great location (easier said than done).

Newton would often say that it was only at 50, “he got good” [at photography].

The Process

Here are Helmut’s own words when asked, how do you come up with an idea and plan for a shoot:

It’s a long process. Something no one knows about is that I do all of my work in writing first. I always carry around a little notebook in which I can jot down the minutest details concerning photos that I’ll take some other time. I can’t draw. So, I make notes on props, lighting, the compositional parts of my picture. Perspiration under the arms, puffed-up lips, a kiss, a man’s shoulder, a woman’s hand, the inside of the elbow, the interplay of muscles, of vowels and consonants, a man and woman naked to the waist, a man.

Helmut by Helmut Newton (1987)

In a schoolboy’s notebook in which I write everything that interests me. It is divided into three headings: ideas, girls, places. If I don’t write it down, I forget it. All these notes slumber, evolve, take form. This summer, on a beach at Saint-Tropez, I saw two boys and a girl who lived together happily. The perfect ménage à trois. I recently picked up on this image for a fashion series that appeared in the Italian issue of Vogue.

Published in the 1976 April/May issue of Penthouse Photo World

Nude Theory Book

Here are a few excerpts from his Nude Theory book which explain his shooting process in more detail:

I like to expose and develop normally. Everything is done by the book… the negatives they [the lab] develop are extremely good. I don’t like thin negatives; I think they are a problem.

As a rule, I use an orange filter the moment I get sunshine. In the old days, I used a lot of red filters. My filters are not very dark, about one stop. The orange filter helps the skin. It makes the skin look smoother and suppresses minor blemishes. I just have to be careful that the lips don’t go too pale. You can compensate with lipstick, but with a red filter, the lips go completely white. I don’t think there is ever any point in putting a filter on when there is flat light.

Sometimes, even in broad daylight, it is easier to use a tripod when you want an exact composition. The only thing is mistakes can be a great help.

Lighting Advice

If I have very bright sunlight with a lot of speed left over, then it is beautiful to make negatives at an exposure index of 200, which is much better. Personally, I don’t like to see grain in a photograph.

I often use artificial light because I like to photograph at night. Generally, I use 100- or 60-watt bulbs because I hate burning in a print. I am very careful about artificial light, particularly a 500-watt bulb, because it can become too crude and impossible to control. The hardness of sunlight is another quality because it is purer, easier to control, and has much more bounce.

I do a lot of my work at midday, even in the desert, because I adore hard light, whether I’m working on fashion, portraits, or nudes. With the nude, hard light brings out those muscles.

Helmut loved available light. He could light with a lightbulb in a closet. He would expose in what I would call ‘available darkness’ but would not be afraid to go out in the middle of the day in the hard sun. Occasionally, he would use a little flash on the camera but it wasn’t like on my shoots with huge equipment trucks.

George Holz, Assistant to Helmut Newton (Source: The Unseasonal Interview)

Other Resources

Recommended Helmut Newton Books

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• Big Nudes (Editions du Regard, 1981)
• Sumo (Taschen, 1999)
• Polaroids (Taschen, 2015)

Helmut Newton Videos

Helmut by June

This is my favorite Helmut documentary.

Helmut by June provides a behind-the-scenes look at Newton’s work process as a photographer. Having purchased Helmut a video camera for Christmas, June began using the camera herself after he refused to use it.  Featuring the likes of Cindy Crawford and Carla Bruni, this 53-minute documentary provides an intimate portrayal of Newton by the woman who knew him best.

Frames from the Edge

This film from 1989 follows Helmut Newton as he travels from the US, Monaco, France and Germany. The film captures his working methods and the spirit and attitude of the eighties fashion and celebrity world. It documents Newton on set and includes interviews with models, celebrities and Helmut himself, where he discusses his work in more detail.

Helmut Newton – Contacts

This short video is taken from the documentary Contacts, Vol. 1 and provides an insight into the work of Newton through his contact sheets. The commentary helps us better understand the process of capturing the image and the many subtleties involved.

Charlie Rose Interview with Helmut Newton

In this 25-minute video from 1999, Helmut sits down with US talk show host Charlie Rose and discusses his photography work and the upcoming release of his book, Sumo.

Editorial Note: The videos above are listed with the intention of inspiring and helping other photographers learn. They have been sourced from open source platforms. No infringement of copyright is intended by this post.

Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel for up to date videos and to view our photographer playlists.

More Helmut Newton Photos

Looking for more photos by Helmut Newton? Check out these galleries here and here

Fact Check

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Recommended Links

Helmut Newton Foundation
Penthouse Interview (Penthouse Photo World, April/May 1976)
Voguepedia Profile at Looking Lab
Helmut Newton – Early Years (Google Arts)
Frank Horvat with Helmut Newton: (October 1986)
Helmut Newton: Fantastic Voyeur by Mitchell Glazer (Esquire, 1983)
The Private Photo Shoot that Sparked a War Inside Van Halen (Medium)
Helmut Newton by Helmut Newton
Dazed Digital A-Z Guide on Helmut Newton

Sources

Autobiography: Helmut Newton (Random House, 2003)
Helmut Newton – Frames from the Edge (1989)
Helmut by June
Sumo (Taschen, 1999)
American Photo Magazine – (May/June 2004)
Wikipedia
Helmut Newton: Fantastic Voyeur by Mitchell Glazer (Esquire, 1983)
Penthouse Interview (Penthouse Photo World, April/May 1976)
Helmut Newton by Helmut Newton
Frank Horvat with Helmut Newton (October 1986)

Thanks to the following:

• Helmut Newton Foundation
• APUG community at photrio.com

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