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Observations. Photographs by Richard Avedon. Comments by Truman Capote
Observations, with photographs by Richard Avedon, texts by Truman Capote, and graphic design by Alexey Brodovitch, was the height of sophisticated elegance when published in 1959. And it is without a doubt among the most influential photographic books of the twen- tieth century. Capote (1924–1984) published his novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s the year before Observations appeared, and like Avedon, who although still in his mid-thirties was already something of a legend in the fashion industry, Capote knew how to combine the otherworldly attentiveness of an aesthete with an equally passionate engagement with the passing parade. Capote’s crystalline descriptive technique, which many believe he brought to a pitch of perfection with In Cold Blood (1966), may well owe something to the lessons of the all-seeing photographic eye.
- GenresPhotography
First published January 1, 1959
About the author
Richard Avedon
183 books45 followersPeople note fashion photography and stark portraits of Richard Avedon, an American.
Richard Avedon captured ideals of celebrity and beauty in the 20th and early 21st centuries to helped to establish a contemporary art form. Avedon developed a distinct, iconic style. While his contemporaries focused on single moments or composed formal images, his lighting and minimalist white backdrops drew the viewer to the intimate, emotive power of the expression of the subject.
Richard Avedon studied philosophy at Columbia University, New York, and served in the department of the merchant marines of the United States before studying with Alexey Brodovitch at the New School for Social Research.
From 1945, he worked and revolutionized the craft even as he honed his aesthetic to 1965. He worked in magazines from Harper's Bazaar and Vogue to Life and Look. Later, he moved into journalism and the art world. His subjects included pop stars, models, musicians, writers, artists, workers, political activists, soldiers, victims of Vietnam War, politicians, and his family.
Curator Paul Roth observes: “In an Avedon portrait, the face maps an intersection: It is a place where the world outside the photograph meets the world inside the mind.”
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York presented solo exhibitions in 1978 and 2002. The Whitney Museum of Art in New York in 1994 mounted major retrospective. The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humblebaek, Denmark, mounted his works in 2007, and the exhibit traveled to Milan, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, and San Francisco through 2009.
Richard Avedon captured ideals of celebrity and beauty in the 20th and early 21st centuries to helped to establish a contemporary art form. Avedon developed a distinct, iconic style. While his contemporaries focused on single moments or composed formal images, his lighting and minimalist white backdrops drew the viewer to the intimate, emotive power of the expression of the subject.
Richard Avedon studied philosophy at Columbia University, New York, and served in the department of the merchant marines of the United States before studying with Alexey Brodovitch at the New School for Social Research.
From 1945, he worked and revolutionized the craft even as he honed his aesthetic to 1965. He worked in magazines from Harper's Bazaar and Vogue to Life and Look. Later, he moved into journalism and the art world. His subjects included pop stars, models, musicians, writers, artists, workers, political activists, soldiers, victims of Vietnam War, politicians, and his family.
Curator Paul Roth observes: “In an Avedon portrait, the face maps an intersection: It is a place where the world outside the photograph meets the world inside the mind.”
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York presented solo exhibitions in 1978 and 2002. The Whitney Museum of Art in New York in 1994 mounted major retrospective. The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humblebaek, Denmark, mounted his works in 2007, and the exhibit traveled to Milan, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, and San Francisco through 2009.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 16, 2018
I'm constantly reading books now, maybe as a way to read less of the news.
This book is one Karen wanted to purchase, a pricy book even in fair condition, extravagant in size and paper. Even the type is huge. A book best read upon a dining room table, as I have read most of it.
This book came out the year before I was born, and I turned 58 this year, so this book seems more like an artifact than a revelation. It is an archival text, written by Truman Capote when he was in his mid-thirties, still handsome, a suave enfant terrible, filled with words and knowledge of the arts he needed to release from his mind. Richard Avedon, the reason for the book, is about the same age, presenting here almost nothing but portraits, most photographed with grainy high-speed film, often capturing people in the flight of the body, or parts of it.
Some of the photographs are arresting captures of a human, others are throwaways, some are printed too small, especially considering the size of the pages. Still, one can tell this is a great photographer at work. But his truly great work is not here, not the photographs that first captured my Avedonian imagination at the end of the 1970s.
Capote is vibrant, a writer on speed, throwing together bon mots and mal with abandon. He is controlled, still a master, as he rolls out sentences that extend, phrase by clause, into infinity, trying for the most memorable and showy observations he can. His text strains against the raging pulse of his ambition, sentence by sentence. The pyrotechnics are beautiful, amazing, and sometimes go shooting onto a neighbor's home, setting the roof on fire.
So he writes as I would if I were still fairly young, and Avedon seems to be shooting with the same film I shot back in the late 1970s. So I am drawn to this book and pushed away. I hold back. I wait. I want something different, but still the same.
This book is one Karen wanted to purchase, a pricy book even in fair condition, extravagant in size and paper. Even the type is huge. A book best read upon a dining room table, as I have read most of it.
This book came out the year before I was born, and I turned 58 this year, so this book seems more like an artifact than a revelation. It is an archival text, written by Truman Capote when he was in his mid-thirties, still handsome, a suave enfant terrible, filled with words and knowledge of the arts he needed to release from his mind. Richard Avedon, the reason for the book, is about the same age, presenting here almost nothing but portraits, most photographed with grainy high-speed film, often capturing people in the flight of the body, or parts of it.
Some of the photographs are arresting captures of a human, others are throwaways, some are printed too small, especially considering the size of the pages. Still, one can tell this is a great photographer at work. But his truly great work is not here, not the photographs that first captured my Avedonian imagination at the end of the 1970s.
Capote is vibrant, a writer on speed, throwing together bon mots and mal with abandon. He is controlled, still a master, as he rolls out sentences that extend, phrase by clause, into infinity, trying for the most memorable and showy observations he can. His text strains against the raging pulse of his ambition, sentence by sentence. The pyrotechnics are beautiful, amazing, and sometimes go shooting onto a neighbor's home, setting the roof on fire.
So he writes as I would if I were still fairly young, and Avedon seems to be shooting with the same film I shot back in the late 1970s. So I am drawn to this book and pushed away. I hold back. I wait. I want something different, but still the same.
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March 21, 2024I can't conventionally rate this book because physical copies are scarce (and expensive) meaning I could only read the related blurbs by Capote. They're competently written, as all of Capote's work is, but it felt like he had nothing to say or, in those that he did, all he offers are unflattering or embarrassing stories. This isn't any big deal, but usually books like this are meant to showcase its subjects in the spotlight, not bury them beneath a mound of waste.
September 21, 2015
You may read online at The Library of America • Story of the Week.
Opening lines:
Richard Avedon is a man with gifted eyes. An adequate description; to add is sheer flourish. His brown and deceiv- ingly normal eyes, so energetic at seeing the concealed and seizing the spirit, ceasing the flight of a truth, a mood, a face, are the important features: those, and his born-to-be absorp- tion in his craft, photography, without which the unusual eyes, and the nervously sensitive intelligence supplying their power, could not dispel what they distillingly imbibe.
Opening lines:
Richard Avedon is a man with gifted eyes. An adequate description; to add is sheer flourish. His brown and deceiv- ingly normal eyes, so energetic at seeing the concealed and seizing the spirit, ceasing the flight of a truth, a mood, a face, are the important features: those, and his born-to-be absorp- tion in his craft, photography, without which the unusual eyes, and the nervously sensitive intelligence supplying their power, could not dispel what they distillingly imbibe.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews