Iconic Avedon

Photography for me has always been a sort of double-sided mirror. The one side reflecting my subject, the other reflecting myself.
—Richard Avedon

Gagosian is pleased to announce Iconic Avedon: A Centennial Celebration of Richard Avedon, at the gallery on rue de Ponthieu, Paris, from January 22 to March 2, 2024. The exhibition marks the centenary of Avedon’s birth in May 1923. Often attributed to his photographs, the word iconic applies equally to their maker, and is used here to illuminate his exceptional influence on culture today.

Soon after establishing his New York studio in the mid-1940s, Avedon developed an inventive, sophisticated, and instantly recognizable style. As a staff photographer for Harper’s Bazaar (1944–65), and later Vogue (1966–88), he produced many of the publications’ quintessential images. As Avedon’s reputation grew, the defining figures of the twentieth century—performers, writers, artists, intellectuals, and other notables—were drawn to see themselves through his lens. Avedon produced images that became synonymous with the legends of his sitters. Featuring his photographs of subjects both renowned and obscure, the exhibition highlights the innovative role Avedon played as a creator of icons.

Avedon’s most incisive portraits manifest his uncanny ability to elicit the singular vitality of his sitters, inscribing their charged essences—even those of the already famous—in decisive frames extracted from the larger arc of living history. His portrayals of Marian Anderson (1955), Marilyn Monroe (1957), Bob Dylan (1965), and the Beatles (1967) are as indelible as they are timeless. “It’s not the way I look,” Harold Brodkey remarked about his portrait by Avedon, “but the way I am.” With an unerring eye, impeccable timing, and a prescient sensibility, Avedon vaulted the models Dovima (1955), China Machado (1958), and Penelope Tree (1967) to the pinnacle of their profession. He also recorded incomparable images of Charlie Chaplin (1952), Jacqueline Kennedy (1961), Andy Warhol (1969), and Tina Turner (1971) at pivotal moments in their storied lives.