A long 1958 New Yorker profile of Richard Avedon

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1958/11/08/a-woman-entering-a-taxi-in-the-rain?

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<p>I scanned the article -- it was just too long for me to read every word -- and it seemed to be awfully superficial and fan-boyish.</p>

<p>Back in the day, non-photographers used to adore Avedon because he was just edgy enough to seem clever and charmingly Bad (but never <em>too</em> Bad), and it was always very easy to figure out what his pictures were about. And his craftsmanship was always impeccable. The linked article read like a PR release by his press agent, burnishing that carefully created Avedon persona. Nothing wrong with this -- it was exactly what worked in the business he was in at that time.</p>

<p>Then the pictures of his dying father put a fly in the soup. In his later years, he got much more interestingly complicated, IMO. I'm thinking, also, that maybe the contrast of this later work to the earlier work adds bite to it.</p>