There are snapshots by others throughout the book, but none by Avedon himself. You’ll learn that Calvin Klein paid Avedon “three million in 1980 dollars” ($9.6 million in 2018 dollars) for the famous ad campaign showing a young Brooke Shields in an unbuttoned blouse and blue jeans saying, “Nothing comes between me and my Calvins.”Īstonishingly, this biography of a world-renowned photographer contains none of his photographs.Īvedon was as celebrated for his black-and-white portraits as his fashion photography, but unless you know his work, you won’t understand why these portraits raised the ire of some of his subjects, like Truman Capote, whose “puffy-faced” image is described but not shown.Īnd neither are Avedon’s “vaunted picture of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor,” described as “two people without a country and without a soul,” and the photographer’s “highly controversial” and “fraught” portraits taken “relentlessly” of his terminally ill father during the months he was dying. You’ll read about “his iconic image of Dovima and the elephants,” but you won’t see why the image is iconic. If you recognize Kate and Naomi and Veruschka and Christy as first-name fashion models, you might pay $40 for the book, but you won’t see any of Richard Avedon’s acclaimed work for Bazaar or Vogue in it. Aronson, which drops more names in 700 pages than a prison rollcall.

If you’re into pop culture, you’ll inhale Avedon: Something Personal by Norma Stevens and Steven M.L.

Avedon something personal