Richard Avedon is seen in this photo from 1979.
The most defining photographs of Richard Avedon's career were deceptively simple with few tricks, resulting in images broken down to just the bare emotions and spirit of the subject. A New York City native, Avedon began his career while he was in the Merchant Marines, photographing identification photos of crewmen. After two years of service, he left in 1944 to work as a photographer and study under the legendary Alexey Brodovitch, then art director of Harper's Bazaar, at the New School for Social Research. Deviating from the conventions of fashion photography, Avedon presented an original approach — displaying his models filled with expression and vulnerability. After a 20-year tenure with Harper's Bazaar as a staff photographer, Avedon left in 1965 to photograph for Vogue through 1988 and continued to make portraits and fashion photographs for magazines throughout the rest of his career. Avedon's legacy of work continues to be widely exhibited and lives on in the collections of nearly every major museum around the world.