92 Quotes by Richard Avedon

One man’s fantasy is another man’s job.

We all perform. It’s what we do for each other all the time, deliberately or unintionally. It’s a way of telling about ourselves in the hope of being recognized as what we’d like to be. – PERFORMANCE.

A photographic portrait is a picture of someone who knows he’s being photographed, and what he does with this knowledge is as much a part of the photograph as what he’s wearing or how he looks. He’s implicated in what’s happening, and he has a certain real power over the result.

The way someone who’s being photographed presents himself to the camera, and the effect of the photographer’s response on that presence, is what the making of a portrait is all about.

There is no truth in photography. There is no truth about anyone’s person.

When you pose for a photograph, it’s behind a smile that isn’t yours. You are angry and hungry and alive. What I value in you is that intensity. I want to make portraits as intense as people.

I always prefer to work in the studio. It isolates people from their environment.

I see pictures of myself and I always knew that what I was feeling didn’t look like that guy in the pictures.

My photographs don’t go below the surface. They don’t go below anything. They’re readings of the surface. I have great faith in surfaces. A good one is full of clues.