Richard Avedon Quotes

A photographic portrait is a picture of someone who knows he's being photographed, and what he does with this knowledge is as much a part of the photograph as what he's wearing or how he looks. He's implicated in what's happening, and he has a certain real power over the result.

Real people move, they bear with them the element of time. It is this fourth dimension of people that I try to capture in a photograph.

I've photographed just about everyone in the world. But what I hope to do is photograph people of accomplishment, not celebrity, and help define the difference once again.

A portrait photographer depends upon another person to complete his picture. The subject imagined, which in a sense is me, must be discovered in someone else willing to take part in a fiction he cannot possibly know about.

I believe that you've got to love your work so much that it is all you want to do.

i think charm is the ability to be truly interested in other people

Marilyn Monroe gave more to the still camera than any actress, any woman I've ever photographed; infinitely more patient, more demanding of herself and more comfortable in front of the camera than away from it.

Sometimes I think all my pictures are just pictures of me. My concern is...the human predicament; only what I consider the human predicament may simply be my own.

If each photograph steals a bit of the soul, isn't it possible that I give up pieces of mine every time I take a picture?

Just advertising departments with legs and high heels.

I always prefer to work in the studio. It isolates people from their environment