| | I was just writing in different places. In different ways and times, without icons, about different things.
High school countdown? Down to the double digits. Just recording that as a landmark moment. This is huge.
But that's not what this entry will be about.
Two days ago my teacher told my photo class (only about ten students were listening, the rest off in the darkroom or doing something not related to school on the computer) that for the next two days we'd be watching a documentary on Richard Avedon. Home Vision Arts is a company that makes documentaries on all sorts of photographers. I think we watched the one on Amy Arbus and Annie Leibovitz last year. I remembered lots of black and white images, a series of contact sheets filmed slowly, and many people praising the photographer of the "episode". Maybe from instinct, I groaned with my classmates when she announced that. She was taken aback and said, "I used to love movie days when I was in high school! What's wrong with you guys!"
For about the first ten minutes of the video I was only half paying attention, but the pictures caught my eye. I took my backpack and moved to the front, squeezing by the rows of desks that were placed too closely to each other. Students were texting, sitting forward ostensibly paying attention to the film but really sleeping, or just had their head facedown on the desk because they had nothing better to do. Meanwhile, I enjoyed my seat up close to the big screen, no heads in the way. The next day I was ready to watch the second half of the documentary, completely riveted and fascinated and envious of Richard Avedon's portraits.
  
Ever since I can remember (but probably before as well, since I had to develop this habit from somewhere) I have had a penchant to write down an interesting facts I hear in movies or quotes that make me smile or people's names I think I'll have to refer back to. Throughout this documentary, I'd be scribbling things in my student planner every which way, squeezing a quote in between homework assignments and random design drawings. I want to organize them here, and elaborate them and connect my notes with pictures that I stared at for as long as they stayed on the screen before they moved to another person talking about the genius and rare qualities of this 20th century photographer.
-fascinated by movement, the human body, especially the face. It has worlds of detail in every wrinkle, every inch of the face makes up some part of their life. And a face can contort in so many ways, the eyes and nose and mouth can scrunch up and elongate to a certain extent and stretch and be manipulated in endless ways - and no face is exactly the same. (Though I have not studied identical twins' faces closely enough...maybe Avedon did.)
 
-Richard Avedon (1923-2004) tells a story through fashion: gloves, cigarettes, the look on every face: "utter chic boredom". He went beyond the glamour and glitz and flawlessness of fashion and told a story through each photograph. Everyone has a story to tell, even the bystanders, the people that aren't necessarily the subject of the picture but are still present and contributing to the complexity of the photo.
-Nastassia Kinski - model in the snake photo. If you want you should search her name and look closely at the snake's tongue that is kissing her ear - the only time that that happened, Avedon had what it took to capture it. As he said, "Nastassia rose to the moment, the snake rose to the moment, I rose to the moment..." He then made the picture into a poster and sold two million copies.
-One of Avedon's photographic subjects discussed in the movies was Isak Dinisen, a writer who was obsessed with beauty to such an extent that it drove her to anorexia. (Understand that most people I am talking about here I don't really know anything about except what was said in the movie..just a sidenote.) He photographed so many important people of the 20th century from around the 40s to the 90s, I'm guessing. He thinks a photographer's job is to use this weapon called a camera to capture how the world was, to preserve it so kids that are coming into the world know what happened before they were born.
-Ronald Fischer - bee model. Avedon said that it's a Buddhist take on things (I am badly paraphrasing here)...just silently enduring the hardships of life.
-Dorothy Parker in her old age, (in 2002) after her high success is over...someone said "It looks as if all the wit she ever had left her a second before that picture was taken." Avedon brings out the worst in her and that low time in her life will be captured forever.
 
-great quote: "One of the great joys in life is watching light."
-more names: Duane Michaels, Irving Penn. Last photo is by Duane Michaels. I saw this photograph, saw the name that appeared in white text and then faded and wrote it down before I forgot.
I found myself passionately agreeing with many of the things said by Avedon himself or his art directors/people who have associated with him in the past. Although he is very charismatic and poised and had a vibrant personality, whenever anyone would ask him how he'd describe himself, he'd say, "The most isolated person in the world." Also, watching light never gets old. The way it falls across anything - a leaf, the road, grass, a five-year-old's hair, a hand - studying that is so rewarding and moving. After all, that is all photography is - drawing with light.
I hope that some of these pictures have transfixed you for longer than the time it takes to take a snapshot and I hope I have conveyed how interested and intrigued I was by every single one of his pictures, how this photographer and the documentary itself has reopened my formerly dormant but always stifled fascination about the charm and insight of each human being.
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| | Posted 4/9/2009 8:20 PM - 14 Views - 2 eProps - 1 Comment
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