The exhibition entitled Avedon: Relationships, traces the more than sixty-year career of the photographer with photographs from the collection of the Center for Creative Photography (CCP) in Tucson (USA) and the Richard Avedon Foundation (USA).
A section of the exhibition is dedicated to the collaboration between Richard Avedon and Gianni Versace, which began with the campaign for the spring/summer 1980 collection with the designer's debut, up to that of the spring/summer 1998 collection, the first signed by Donatella Versace.
Richard Avedon and Gianni Versace
Thanks to his gaze, Avedon was one of the few photographers to interpret Gianni Versace's avant-garde, illustrating the style and elegance of the Italian designer.
Avedon's abstract language acts in a compressed space. The figures explode choreographies of the bodies of some of the most celebrated top models of the time, in almost convulsive movements that highlight the shape and materiality of the clothes they wear, as in the case of the campaign for the spring/summer 1993 collection, which sees protagonists Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington, Kate Moss, Aya Thorgren, Shalom Harlow. The exhibition itinerary extends into ten sections – The Artist, The Premise of the show, Early Fashion, Actors and Directors, Visual Artists, Performing Artists / Musicians and writers / Poets, Avedon's People, Politics, Late Fashion, Versace.
The first fashion photographs taken by Avedon
Created for the pages of women's magazines such as "Harper's Bazaar" and "Vogue", the title with which he worked from 1960 until 1988. In these "filmic" photographs, Avedon uses additional figures in a strategic key. As in Carmen, Tribute to Munkácsi, Cardin Coat, Place François-Premier, Paris, 1957, where the photographer focuses on the model who, suspended in mid-air in the jump, is placed in the center of the frame.
The simplicity of Carmen's photo contrasts with the image of Suzy Parker with Robin Tattersall and Gardner McKay, Lanvin-Castillo Evening Dress, Café des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1956, in which the model is bent over a pinball machine in the hall of mirrors of the Café des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
Avedon and the Supermodels
Many are the supermodel with whom Avedon worked intensely, from Dovima to China Machado, from Suzy Parker to Jean Shrimpton, from Penelope Tree to Twiggy, to Veruschka. From the extraordinary affinity he had with Dovima, for example, spectacular images sprang, such as the iconic one Dovima with elephants, Dior evening dress, Cirque d'Hiver, Paris 1955.
As far as portraits are concerned, Avedon is known for his particular style, developed starting from 1969. An example of this is the photograph from 1981, chosen as the guiding image of the exhibition, which portrays Nastassja Kinski, lying softly on the floor and embraced by a snake.
Avedon and the artists
Avedon was able to photograph many of his subjects years later. This is the case of the painter Jasper johns in 1965 and 1976, by the writer carson mccullers in 1956 and 1958, of the politician George Wallace in 1963 and 1976, of the poet Allen Ginsberg in 1963 and 1970.
But the most striking case of a photographic relationship extended over time is perhaps the one involving a friend Truman Capote. Avedon first photographed Capote in 1949. Then, in 1959, the two collaborated on Avedon's first book, Observations, a collection of portraits of famous people, including the opera singer Marian Anderson, the painter Pablo Picasso and marine scientist and explorer Jacques Cousteau. Capote and Avedon worked together again the following year. While the writer was in Garden City, Kansas, writing in cold blood, Avedon joined him on four separate occasions to photograph alleged murderers Perry Smith and Richard "Dick" Hickock, awaiting trial.
Avedon and the world of entertainment
The exhibition itinerary also offers a large selection of portraits of celebrities from the world of entertainment, actors, dancers, musicians but also of civil rights activists, politicians and writers, including those ofthe Beatles (John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr), but also Bob Dylan, Michelangelo Antonioni, Allen Ginsberg, Sofia Loren, Marylin Monroe, the Dalai Lama and two of Andy Wahrol, where the father of Pop Art American decides to show her intimacy to Richard Avedon by flashing his gunshot scars, after surviving an assassination attempt.
One section is dedicated to portraits of exponents of American movements for civil rights and members of the American Congress, the latter merged into the portfolio The Family, made in 1976 for the magazine Rolling Stone, which documented theelite of US political power.
