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 Athens is pleased to present photographs by Richard Avedon, following the career-spanning exhibition “Avedon: Women” at Gagosian Beverly Hills in late 2013.

Avedon’s reportage, portraiture, and fashion work dissolved the lines between photographic genres and covered a breadth of subjects, from figures both famous and anonymous to historic moments of the American Civil Rights Movement and the fall of the Berlin Wall. From the beginning of his career as a fashion photographer in the 1940s, he was particularly renowned for his distinctive and transformative imagery of women.

Avedon’s images are imbued with unconventional allure and formidable intelligence. An iconic photograph from 1948 focuses on a fur-trimmed shoe by Perugia, worn by a model walking among others in a busy street, the Eiffel Tower looming in the distant background. In 1955, Dovima, wearing an elegant white hat by Balenciaga, peers through a car window. In an image from Avedon’s late career, the statuesque Malgosia Bela and Gisele Bündchen brace themselves, perhaps against unseen danger, in edgy Dior couture.