Richard Avedon

Richard Avedon is an American photographer who grew up in a Jewish-Russian family that immigrated to the United States and lived in New York. He first began photography at the age of twelve, started shooting for the young Hebrew men association and his mother facilitated his interest while running her own dress manufacturing business. His mother Anna, helped allow him become interested in fashion and photography as he went on the combine his interests by shooting for various fashion magazines. While his mother encouraged his interests, his father was much more strict and instilled values that money, educations and maintaining physical health are vital to living a full life. During his career, he influenced American fashion immensely, but also took very many socially meaningful portraits of napalm victims during the Vietnam war, capturing the harm that the war caused not only on victims living in Vietnam, but also the emotional damage it did to American people in terms of losing trust in the government, losing loved ones and constantly living with the burden that the young men around them could be next to go; you can see this in his photography. He also does a lot of abstract portraits, that are almost like something you would expect to see in an art gallery as it can hold different perceptions among different people similar to works of art. I would say my favorite thing about Avedon is not only his upbringing, but the fact he was able to step away from photographing models for various fashion magazines, and do some work that will hold meaning to American culture for years to come.