Richard Avedon: People

Overview

From haphazard Polaroids to meticulous glamour shots, photography has always been about people. And, long before Humans of New York or The Sartorialist, there was one American artist who got straight to the heart of the matter. Delving into street photography, high fashion, and striking artistic projects including an iconic survey of America's West, Richard Avedon was a master of the form for over six decades.

In this collection of works presented with the help of The Richard Avedon Foundation in New York and The National Portrait Gallery in Canberra, we see the artist at his most iconic and influential. Composed of 80 monochrome photographs shot between 1949 and 2002, People includes portraits of celebrities including glamour icons such as Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn, counterculture legends like Bob Dylan and Truman Capote and many more.

With his ties to the fashion world and his frank, simplistic style, Avedon was basically a much, much classier, 20th century Terry Richardson. Head over to the Ian Potter Museum of Art to catch a glimpse at how things used to be.