Richard Avedon – In The American West: Photo Icons - Video

[Martin Vronsky]

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At 55 fashion photographer, Richard Avedon was at the height of his career, shooting the likes of Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe and Richard Nixon. After suffering from a life-threatening heart inflammation he began to grapple with his own mortality. It was the feelings and emotions of those days that instilled a desire in him to work on a project away from the glitter and glamour of the fashion industry. Photography was a way for Avedon to face the things that scared him, like the death of his father, or his sister's battle with schizophrenia. Richard Avedon’s contribution to fashion photography was already celebrated as groundbreaking in his lifetime, but it was the raw and provoking portrait series focusing mostly on the working class people throughout the western U.S, that would become his most important body of work.