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.
Richard Avedon Immortal: Portraits of Aging, 1951-2004
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 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
Avedon at Work: In the American West
2003 - University of Texas Press
Richard Avedon, Laura Wilson, Larry McMurtry
Books From the Same Publisher
Passport Photo Service: An Unexpected Archive of Celebrity Portraits
Apr 2026 - Phaidon Press
Philip Sharkey
expand_circle_rightLatest Books in This Category
John Baer: The Extraordinary Ordinary: A Memoir in Photographs, 1945–1954
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