Word: avedon
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That men (and women, too, naturally) are products of their environment is a fact we should all know by now, but Burt Avedon's Ah, Men! goes into pedantic detail on the subject, using a few of his own thoughts but mostly those of a rather notable group, including Ashley Montagu, Helen Gurley Brown, Sterling Hayden, Gore Vidal, Michael Korda, George Plimpton, et al., in this dry, humorless tome. There are chapters on Growing Up, Work, Goals and Sex, and the quotes run from the noble (Plimpton: "I went to an English school in New York where we were taught...
Similar stories of steep appreciation can be told about the work of almost every other major 20th century photographer: Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Edward Weston, Walker Evans, W. Eugene Smith, Diane Arbus and Imogen Cunningham, among the dead; Harry Callahan, Frederick Sommer, Paul Caponigro, and Fashion Photographers Richard Avedon and Irving Penn, among the living. The great pictures of the 19th century are more expensive still. Last May two albums containing 100 early California and Oregon scenes by Carleton E. Watkins were sold for $198,000. "A print is amusing at $100," quips one art dealer...
Portraits: the Work of Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Weegee, August Sanders, and Home Shapshots--Elsa Dorfman, Mather game room...
...year ago American Vogue published a mysterious twelve-page spread of photographs by Richard Avedon showing a man alternately caressing and menacing a female model. At the dramatic peak of the sequence, the man smashes the woman across the face. What's more, she seems to enjoy it: on the next page she is shown nudging him affectionately. Rochelle Udell, art director of Vogue, justifies this kind of brutal eroticism on the ground that "years ago, mannequins were clothes hangers. Now women wearing those clothes are touched by life. So we use some situational photography-the mysterious...
However degrading, these images apparently sell merchandise. Cheeks sales for the final quarter were up 500% over the previous year, and the Camel's Hump display increased sales by 25%. The John Anthony jumpsuit worn by the battered woman in Avedon's Vogue pictures sold "beautifully," according to a company spokeswoman. "There was a lot of good reaction," she said, "so business-wise it was very successful...