Camera lies all the time. Itโs all it does is lie, because when you choose this moment instead of this moment, when youโฆ the moment youโve made a choice, youโre lying about something larger. Lying is an ugly word. I donโt mean lying. But any artist picks and chooses what they want to paint or write about or say. Photographers are the same.
Richard AvedonWhen you pose for a photograph, it's behind a smile that isn't yours. You are angry and hungry and alive. What I value in you is that intensity. I want to make portraits as intense as people.
Richard AvedonI always prefer to work in the studio. It isolates people from their environment. They become in a sense... symbolic of themselves. I often feel that people come to me to be photographed as they would go to a doctor or a fortune teller - to find out how they are.
Richard AvedonI am, and forever will be, devastated by the gift of Audrey Hepburn before my camera. I cannot lift her to greater heights. She is already there. I can only record. I cannot interpret her. There is no going further than who she is. She has achieved in herself her ultimate portrait.
Richard AvedonFor hours she danced and sang and flirted and did this thing that's-she did Marilyn Monroe. And then there was the inevitable drop. And when the night was over and the white wine was over and the dancing was over, she sat in the corner like a child, with everything gone. I saw her sitting quietly without expression on her face, and I walked towards her but I wouldn't photograph her without her knowledge of it. And as I came with the camera, I saw that she was not saying no.
Richard Avedon