Fashion is where I make my living. I'm not knocking it; it's a pleasure to make a living that way. Then there's the deeper pleasure of doing my portraits.
Interpretation
Fashion provides a livelihood, but the deeper joy lies in creating portraits.
In this quote, Richard Avedon expresses the dual nature of his career as both a fashion photographer and a portrait artist. While he acknowledges that fashion photography is how he earns a living and finds pleasure in it, he emphasizes that the true fulfillment comes from the art of creating portraits, which allows for a more profound connection and expression of human identity.
In practice
This quote can be shared in a photography workshop to discuss the balance between commercial and artistic work.
There's always been a separation between fashion and what I call my 'deeper' work. Fashion is where I make my living. I'm not knocking it. It's a pleasure to make a living that way. It's pleasure and then there's the deeper pleasure of doing my portraits. It's not important what I consider myself to be, but I consider myself to be a portrait photographer.
I am, and forever will be, devastated by the gift of Audrey Hepburn before my camera. I cannot lift her to greater heights. She is already there. I can only record. I cannot interpret her. There is no going further than who she is. She has achieved in herself her ultimate portrait.
I never wanted to be called an artist. I wanted to be called a photographer.
Photography has always reminded me of the second child.. trying to prove itself. The fact that it wasn't really considered an art.. that it was considered a craft.. has trapped almost every serious photographer.
My portraits are more about me than they are about the people I photograph.
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.
Anybody that creates anything is just creating new compositions of things that have existed before. We're all creating something, we're all creating our own personal works of art in ourselves.
It's very important that when you have a designer like Marc Jacobs, who is a genius, you give him complete freedom.
So I try to re-invent my own eye every time I tackle a new subject. But it's hard, because everybody has style. You can't help it.
The thought of someone spending $20 to come and see me and saying, 'Oh, I prefer the record and she's completely shattered the illusion' really upsets me. It's such a big deal that people come give me their time.
My fear of life is necessary to me, as is my illness. Without anxiety and illness, I am a ship without a rudder. My art is grounded in reflections over being different from others. My sufferings are part of my self and my art. They are indistinguishable from me, and their destruction would destroy my art. I want to keep those sufferings
In the experience of art, time seems not to exist.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.