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.
Don't write about Man; write about a man.
That the best piece of art a person is capable of making is the one that only they could create.
My duty is to make probable the improbable. If I tell you how I did it, I will ruin your experience.
Music has charms to sooth a savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.
A good poet feels what his community feels. _x000D_ Like if you stub your toe, the rest of your body hurts.
The strange power of art is sometimes it can show that what people have in common is more urgent than what differentiates them. It seems to me it's something that theatre can do, but it's rare; it's very rare.
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