Richard Avedon, one of the ten greatest photographers in the world, died october 1st, 2004.

Avedon was born in New York City to a Jewish-Russian family. He attended DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, where he worked on the school paper with James Baldwin.[2] After briefly attending Columbia University, he started as a photographer for the Merchant Marines in 1942, taking identification pictures of the crewmen with his Rolleiflex camera given to him by his father as a going-away present.

In 1944, he began working as an advertising photographer for a department store, but was quickly discovered by Alexey Brodovitch, the art director for the fashion magazine Harper’s Bazaar. Lillian Bassman also promoted Avedon’s career at Harper’s.

Throughout his career Avedon has maintained a unique style all his own. Famous for their minimalism, Avedon portraits are often well lit and in front of white backdrops. When printed, the images regularly contain the dark outline of the film in which the image was framed. Within the minimalism of his empty studio, Avedon’s subjects move freely, and it is this movement which brings a sense of spontaneity to the images. Often containing only a portion of the person being photographed, the images seem intimate in their imperfection. While many photographers are interested in either catching a moment in time or preparing a formal image, Avedon has found a way to do both.

Beyond his work in the magazine industry, Avedon has collaborated on a number of books of portraits. In 1959 he worked with Truman Capote on a book that documented some of the most famous and important people of the century. Observations included images of Buster Keaton, Gloria Vanderbilt, Pablo Picasso, Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Mae West. Around this same time he began a series of images of patients in mental hospitals. Replacing the controlled environment of the studio with that of the hospital he was able to recreate the genius of his other portraits with non-celebrities. The brutal reality of the lives of the insane was a bold contrast to his other work. Years later he would again drift from his celebrity portraits with a series of studio images of drifters, carnival workers, and working class Americans.

Avedon became the first staff photographer for The New Yorker in 1992.  He has won many awards for his photography, including the International Center of Photography Master of Photography Award in 1993, the Prix Nadar in 1994 for his photobook Evidence, and the Royal Photographic Society 150th Anniversary Medal in 2003

What amazes me is that LaChappelle pulls all these people. Courtney Love is really Courtney Love, and Hillary is really Hillary. Kanye West is Kanye West wearing a crown of thorns. I suppose there’s no end to celebrity ego so people are willing to volunteer for his photographs, except LaChapelle is obviously skewering these figures. At the minimum he plays games of irony with their image or their legacy. He deflates their celebrity ‘brand’ and really repossesses their faces for his own work. Justin Timberlake dressed as Elton John. Pamela Anderson throttling a bloodied Tommy Lee with a big smile on her face, like something out of a slasher flick from the 1970′s.

But the book is not all celebrities. There are spreads of seemingly ordinary people doing what appear to be revoltingly stupid things. A man with a handgun on his dresser and a baby bottle in his hand is pouring candy liquor in it to give to an already inebriated child. There is an obvious element of theater to these vignettes, a feeling that you’re looking into a shadow box from the imaginary 4th wall.

I had never seen LaChapelle’s work before picking up this book.  All in all, this is a book of challenging pictures. I would not leave on the coffee table for if the family are bringing young children by the house, but older kids will get the celebrity-skewering and consumer-skewering nature of the work quite well.

LaChapelle’s images—of the most famous faces on the planet, and marginalized figures like transsexual Amanda Lepore or the cast of his critically acclaimed social documentary Rize—call into question our relationship with gender, glamour, and status. Using his trademark baroque excess, LaChapelle inverts the consumption he appears to celebrate, pointing instead to apocalyptic consequences for humanity itself. While referencing and acknowledging diverse sources such as the Renaissance, art history, cinema, The Bible, pornography, and the new globalized pop culture, LaChapelle has fashioned a deeply personal and epoch-defining visual language that holds up a mirror to our times.

Since 1910, Professional Photographer magazine has helped readers advance careers in the photographic industry. Each issue contains practical lessons for both the business and artistic sides of professional photography. Industry experts regularly cover the latest photographic and digital imaging equipment, provide imaging company updates, and offer business management tips. Profiles of noteworthy photographers also appear frequently, as well as information on upcoming industry special events. Professional Photographer is the official magazine of Professional Photographers of America.