Master Photographers

of the 1950s, 1960s & 1970s*

{
Richard Avedon

Diane Arbus
(* New York City edition)

Robert Mapplethorpe

Richard Avedon
(1923 2004)

An American fashion and

portrait photographer
Avedons work helped define
America's image of style,
beauty and culture during the
second half of the 20th century
Known for his minimalist,
large-scale character-revealing
portraits

Born in New York City in 1923

His mother came from a family of dress manufacturers and his
father owned a clothing store
As a boy, Avedon took a great interest in fashion and enjoyed
photographing the clothes in his father's store
From 1944 to 1950, he studied photography at the New School
for Social Research, in N.Y.C.

He began work as a fashion

photographer for Harper's
Bazaar in 1945
In 1946, Avedon had set up
his own studio and began
providing images for
magazines including Vogue
and Life
Starting in 1947, Avedon was
assigned to cover the fall and
spring fashion collections in
Paris

Throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s, he created elegant

black-and-white photographs showcasing the latest fashions in
real-life settings such as Paris's picturesque cafes, cabarets and
streetcars

Avedon showed models full

of emotion, smiling,
laughing, and often in action
in outdoor settings, which
was revolutionary at the
time

In 1955, he staged a fashion

photo shoot at a circus
The iconic photograph of
that shoot, Dovima with
the Elephants, features the
most famous model of the
time in a black Dior evening
gown

Towards the end of the

1950s, Avedon became
dissatisfied with
daylight photography
and open air locations
and so turned to studio
photography, using
strobe lighting
Avedon left Harper's
Bazaar for Vogue in
1962, becoming the
magazines lead
photographer

In addition to his
fashion photography,
Avedon was also
well known for his
portraiture

His black and white

portraits were
remarkable for
capturing the
humanity and
vulnerability in
famous figures
Marilyn Monroe, Actress, New York City, 1957

His portraits are easily

distinguished by their
minimalist style, where
the person is looking
squarely in the camera,
posed in front of a
blank background

Starting in 1979, Avedon

spent 5 years on a series of
photographs titled In the
American West, focusing on
working class subjects such
as miners, housewives,
children, farmers and
drifters
Avedon visited state fair
rodeos, carnivals, coal
mines, oil fields, slaughter
houses and prisons to find
the right subjects
B.J. Van Fleet, nine-year-old, Ennis, Montana, July 2, 1982

In 1992, Avedon became

the first staff photographer
in the history of The New
Yorker magazine
His last project, which
remained unfinished, was a
portfolio entitled
Democracy that included
portraits of political leaders

His 2004 portrait of Barack

Obama is one of his few
colour photographs

Avedon passed away on

Oct. 1st, 2004 at age 81

Diane Arbus
(1923 1971)

American photographer,
known for her portraits of
unusual people

Arbus often took pictures

of subjects who were
considered deviant or
marginalized (including
circus performers, nudists,
and transgendered people)
Diane Arbus in Central Park, 1969

Born in New York City in 1923

Her parents owned Russek's, a famous Fifth Avenue
department store
The familys wealth insulated Arbus from the effects of the
Great Depression while growing up in the 1930s
In 1941, at the age of eighteen, she married her childhood
sweetheart Allan Arbus, who taught her about photography

In 1946, the Arbuses began a commercial photography

business, with Diane as art director and Allan as the
photographer
They contributed to Glamour, Seventeen, Vogue, and other
magazines even though they both hated the fashion world
In 1956, Arbus quit the commercial photography business to
focus on her own photography
To further her art, Arbus studied with photographer Lisette
Model around this time

 During her wanderings around New York City, Arbus began to

take photographs of the colourful people she found
She visited seedy hotels, public parks, a morgue and other
various locales
These unusual
images had a
raw quality, and
several of them
appeared in the
July 1960 issue
of Esquire
magazine
The Vertical Journey: Six Movements of a Moment
within the Heart of the City, Esquire, 1960

 Around 1962, Arbus

switched from a 35mm
Nikon camera, which
produced grainy
rectangular images, to a
twin-lens reflex
Rolleiflex camera, which
produced more detailed
square images

Child with a toy hand grenade in

Central Park NYC, 1962

 These richly detailed

square-format
portraits became
Arbus signature
style
In 1963, Arbus was
awarded a
Guggenheim
Fellowship for a
project on "American
rites, manners, and
customs"
Stripper, Miss Sata
Lyte, in her dressing
room with glasses
Atlantic City, N.J., 1962

 Her methods
included
establishing a
strong personal
relationship with
her subjects and
re-photographing
some of them
over many years

Identical Twins
Cathleen (l) and
Colleen, Roselle, N.J.,
1966

 The first major

exhibition of her
photographs
occurred at the
Museum of
Modern Art in an
influential 1967
show called
"New
Documents"
A young man in
curlers at home on
West 20th Street,
N.Y.C, 1966

 Her work was

described as
"photography that
emphasized the
pathos and conflicts
of modern life
presented without
editorializing or
sentimentalizing but
with a critical,
observant eye."
King and Queen of a
senior citizens' dance,
N.Y.C., 1970

 Arbus struggled
with depression
throughout her life
On July 26, 1971,
she committed
suicide by
overdosing on drugs
and cutting her
wrists with a razor

Tattooed man at a
Carnival, M.D., 1970

 In 1972, a year after

she took her own
life, Arbus became
the first American
photographer to
have photographs
displayed at the
Venice Biennale
Millions viewed
traveling exhibitions
of her work from
19721979
Two men dancing at a
drag ball, N.Y.C, 1970

 Diane Arbus is the U female

photographer of her generation
Her photos have sold for hundreds
of thousands of dollars
In 2006, the motion picture Fur,
starring Nicole Kidman, presented a
fictional version of her life story

Rober Mapplethorpe
(1946 1989)

An American photographer,
known for his sometimes
controversial large-scale, highly
stylized black and white
photography
Mapplethorpes subjects
included celebrity portraits,
male and female nudes, selfportraits and still-life images of
flowers

Born in Queens, New York City in 1946 to a Roman Catholic

family
He studied for a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Pratt Institute
in Brooklyn, where he majored in Graphic Arts, but dropped
out in 1969 before finishing his degree
Mapplethorpe worked as a photographer for Andy Warhol's
Interview magazine in the late 1960s, taking his first
photographs using a Polaroid camera

In the mid-1970s, he
acquired a Hasselblad
medium-format camera
and began taking
photographs of a wide
circle of friends and
acquaintances, including
artists, musicians, and
socialites

Deborah Harry, 1978

Mapplethorpe worked
primarily in a studio,
and almost exclusively
in black and white
His focus on intimate,
sexually charged images
brought Mapplethorpe
significant critical
attention

Brian Ridley and Lyle Heeter, 1979

In the late 70s,

Mapplethorpe grew
increasingly interested
in documenting New
Yorks underground sex
and bondage scene

He often participated in
the sexual acts he was
photographing

Mapplethorpe was
diagnosed with AIDS in
1986, but continued to
work for several years
Jim, Sausalito, 1977

He had his first major American retrospective at the Whitney

Museum of American Art in 1988

Mapplethorpe died of AIDS related complications on Mar.

9th, 1989
That summer, an exhibit of his photos in Washington, D.C.
sparked a national debate over the public funding of
controversial artwork