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.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the distinction between commercial fashion work and the artist's true passion for portrait photography.
Richard Avedon reflects on the duality of his career by recognizing how fashion provides financial benefits while expressing a deeper artistic satisfaction derived from portrait photography. He suggests that while both hold value, it is the personal connection to his art that defines his identity as a photographer.
In practice
In a discussion on the impact of commercial success in art.
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.
I think all art is about control, the encounter between control and uncontrollable.
I personally made a decision many years ago that I wanted to crawl into portraiture because it had a lot of latitude.
I work for ABC. If the thing that ABC is paying me for is storytelling - not to make sure that a costume is exactly right or all those other things - then it is up to me to find the most creative space possible so that that function of my job can happen.
A writer should care about one thing - the language. To write well - that is his duty. That is his only duty.
Art is the creation of forms symbolic of human feeling.
I learned a few things on my own since, and modified some of the things he taught me, but everything, unequivocally, that I learned about comedy writing I learned from Danny Simon.
I can't think of anything worse, really, than to try to live up to someone else's expectations of what you should be. You don't make art by consensus.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.