Christianne Harmon weekly Post #6

Richard Avedon was an American fashion and portrait photographer. He was the epitome of the modern photographer – a charming, sophisticated man-about-town and a photographer who was able to cross photographic genres. It did not matter where he was, which format he chose to work with or who his subject was, the image would be an Avedon image. It would have that unmistakeable elegance and confidence that marked him out, not just as a great photographer but as a highly successful commercial photographer, who was able to create instantly iconic and memorable images. 
In 1944, Avedon began his career working as an advertising photographer for a department store, but was quickly endorsed by Alexey Brodovtch, the art director for the fashion magazine Harper's Bazaar. In addition to continuing fashion work, by the 1960s Avedon had turned his energies toward making studio portraits of civil rights workers, politicians and cultural dissidents of various stripes in an America fissured by discord and violence. He began to branch out and photographed patients of mental hospital, the Civil RIghts Movement in 1963, protesters of the Vietnam War, and later the fall of the Berlin Wall