Richard Avedon Immortal: Portraits of Aging, 1951-2004

Richard Avedon Immortal: Portraits of Aging, 1951-2004
Category: Photographer Monographs & Art Books
Reviews: star star star star star
Author: Richard Avedon
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Publication Date: 2025
Print Length: 208 pages
Language: English
Price: paid paid paid

An unflinching exploration of aging from one of the twentieth century’s most influential photographers

For more than half a century, Richard Avedon sought to represent advancing age in the faces of the people he photographed. From his earliest years at Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue through to the twenty-first century, Avedon routinely and audaciously broke the rule of flattering public personalities in his portraits. Instead, he chose to highlight the onslaught of what he called the “avalanche of age,” dramatizing the universal experience of getting older.

Accompanying a groundbreaking exhibition at The Image Centre at Toronto Metropolitan University and The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Immortal is the first book to delve into Avedon’s unflinching representation of aging throughout his career.

This elegant hardcover volume features nearly 100 portraits of cultural luminaries, each printed in striking tritone, such as Michelangelo Antonioni, Truman Capote, Marcel Duchamp, Duke Ellington, Toni Morrison, Patti Smith, and Stephen Sondheim, as well as one of Avedon’s last self-portraits. Texts by a star-studded cohort of authors, including Vince Aletti, Adam Gopnik, Paul Roth, and Gaëlle Morel, shed new light on an under-represented element of Avedon’s practice.

Thoughtfully edited and beautifully produced, Immortal testifies emphatically to the determination with which people confront the relentless advance of mortality.

Selected Books by This Photographer

Richard Avedon: Relationships

2023 - Skira

Richard Avedon, Rebecca A. Senf., James Martin, Andrew Schultz, Maria Luisa Frisa, Nicolas Ballario


Avedon: Something Personal

2017 - Random House

Richard Avedon, Norma Stevens, Steven M. L. Aronson


Avedon Fashion 1944-2000

2009 - Harry N. Abrams

Richard Avedon, Carol Squiers, Vince Aletti, Philippe Garner, Willis Hartshorn


Performance

2008 - Harry N. Abrams

Richard Avedon, Mitsuko Lahr, John Gregory, Andre Nichols, Mike Tharp, Twyla Uchida


Richard Avedon: Photographs 1946-2004

2007 - Louisiana Museum of Modern Art

Richard Avedon, Michael Holm


In the American West

2005 - Harry N. Abrams

Richard Avedon, Laura Wilson


Avedon at Work: In the American West

2003 - University of Texas Press

Richard Avedon, Laura Wilson, Larry McMurtry

 

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