Richard Avedon (1923- )

Avedon, Richard (1923- ), American fashion and portrait photographer, whose elegant, innovative fashion work soon brought him international renown, as did his sharply focused, bluntly realistic protrait photographs of presidents, writers, and celebrities. Born in New York City, Avedon was trained as a photographer in the United States Merchant Marine in World War II. He began his career in fashion photography in 1945 with Harper's Bazaar, switching to Vogue magazine in 1966. A retrospective exhibition of his work was mounted in 1978 at New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 1993 he published a collection of his photographs entitled An Autobiography.

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