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.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the complexity of human emotions behind a facade, emphasizing the importance of authenticity in art.
Richard Avedon highlights the dichotomy between outward appearances and inner emotions, suggesting that in photography, the true essence of a person is not represented by mere smiles, but rather by the intensity of their true feelings. He values the raw, unfiltered human experience and seeks to capture this depth in his portraits, conveying that a person's genuine emotions, including anger and hunger, are what make them truly alive.
In practice
This quote could be used in an art critique discussing the depth of portrait photography.
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.
I think all art is about control, the encounter between control and uncontrollable.
You know, sound was still a fairly new thing when I came into movies. And the reason musicals happened is because of sound. They could put music in the picture! That's how it all began.
My whole life has been nothing more than a continuous struggle against Reaction and the death of art.
Say it, no ideas but in things - nothing but the blank faces of the houses and cylindrical trees bent, forked by preconception and accident - split, furrowed, creased, mottled, stained - secret - into the body of the light!
It is therefore indisputable that the limbs of architecture are derived from the limbs of man.
I think producers are more interested in backing concepts than directors and writers. I don't think that's the right way of making a decision about whether you're going to back a film or not.
Music so softens and disarms the mind That not an arrow does resistance find.
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