How many pictures have you torn up because you hate them? What ends up in your scrapbook? The pictures where you look like a good guy and a good fami…

- Richard Avedon

A portrait is not a likeness. The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion. There is no such …

- Richard Avedon

A portrait isn't a fact but an opinion - an occasion rather than a truth.

- Richard Avedon

It's not hard being great occasionally. It's difficult to be good consistently.

- Richard Avedon

My portraits are more about me than they are about the people I photograph.

- Richard Avedon

I always prefer to work in the studio. It isolates people from their environment. They become in a sense... symbolic of themselves. I often feel that…

- Richard Avedon

And if a day goes by without my doing something related to photography, it's as though I've neglected something essential to my existence, as though …

- Richard Avedon

All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.

- Richard Avedon

You can't get at the thing itself, the real nature of the sitter, by stripping away the surface. You can only get beyond the surface by working with …

- Richard Avedon