Avedon

I function more as an editor. In other words, I could draw people out, maybe in the way a director does with a performer. And bring them into the circle of creative work.
—Richard Avedon

Gagosian is pleased to announce Avedon: Women, an exhibition that spans six decades of Richard Avedon’s photography. This is the first solo exhibition of Avedon's work in the Los Angeles area since 1976.

From the beginning of his career as a fashion photographer in the 1940s, Avedon was renowned for his distinctive and transformative imagery of women. His inventiveness, humor, and versatile talent flourished throughout sixty years of capturing both well-known and anonymous female subjects, ranging from celebrities and models to his friends and family. His images were imbued with an unconventional beauty and formidable intelligence.

More than 100 silver gelatin photographs form the core of the exhibition. Ranging from oversized exhibition prints dating from the artist’s 1978 showing at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, to more intimately scaled photographs that he printed and editioned throughout his lifetime, the exhibition emphasizes the striking visual connections that lie beyond chronology or subject matter. It opens with a portrait of Cheryl Crane, the daughter of actress Lana Turner, who Avedon photographed in 1963 after she was exonerated for the killing of her mother’s abusive boyfriend. A 1959 portrait of Brigitte Bardot, printed on a monumental scale, presents her as serious and mysterious. In counterpoint is the large-scale print of artist June Leaf (1975), equally beautiful in her earthy understatedness. A salon-style hanging juxtaposes images such as the elegant Vicomtesse Jacqueline de Ribes (1955) and socialite Elsa Maxwell, lying in bed with her pet skunk (1957).