For Richard Avedon, as with most significant artists, work and life were inseparable. When the photographer died in 2004, at 81, he was on the road, mid-project — “with his boots on,” in the words of Lauren Hutton, one of the many beautiful people he helped to immortalize over a 60-year career. Hutton and the two dozen or so other interviewees in Ron Howard’s admiring documentary make it clear how much affection the New York native inspired while reinventing fashion photography and putting his iconoclastic stamp on fine-art portraiture.
The profile Avedon paints is that of a relentless seeker and high-flying achiever, and a deliciously unapologetic contrarian. How can you not adore an image-maker who says, “Beautiful lighting I always find offensive,” and, regarding little kids as potential photographic subjects: “I find them intensely boring.” Avedon’s interest in the grown-up human face, in what it conceals and reveals, was his lifelong project, one that he pursued within circles of rarefied fame, on the backroads of the American West, and in a poignant late-in-life connection with his father.
Avedon
The Bottom Line
A solid mix of glitz and angst.
