Alright, folks, buckle up because Ron Howard’s latest documentary, ‘Avedon,’ is legit a game-changer. This flick isn’t just another biographical doc; it’s a ‘dope’ cinematic journey into the life and lens of Richard Avedon, a true **Photo Legend**. The report says it’s Howard’s best documentary yet, even topping his ‘The Beatles: Eight Days a Week,’ which, for real, is saying something. The editing, handled by Andrew Morreale, is so on point and artful it should be in filmmaking textbooks. Hundreds of Avedon’s stunning photographs are seamlessly woven into the narrative, creating a near-musical flow that makes you feel the impact of his groundbreaking work. This documentary doesn’t just show you pictures; it explains how Avedon fundamentally shifted the way we perceive the world through the camera.
What’s truly fascinating about Avedon’s body of work, as highlighted in the film, is its epic and tingly paradox. On one hand, he was the ultimate master of high fashion, the dude who captured glamour and impossible beauty for the masses. But at the same time, he was a democratic humanist, making every subject, famous or not, feel profoundly seen. The documentary, according to the review, nails this paradox, making his iconic images sing. Howard integrates old clips and interviews with luminaries like Tina Brown, Larry Gagosian, Twiggy, and Calvin Klein, along with Avedon’s insightful son, John Avedon, placing the photographer right at the center of his own story. The sheer volume of his work is mind-blowing: the executive director of the Richard Avedon Foundation, James Martin, reveals Avedon completed 16,000 sittings from 1944 until his passing in 2004, averaging a session almost every weekday for six decades.
The film kicks off with a classic clip of Richard Avedon, his piercing gaze fixed on the camera, dropping wisdom like, ‘I can say very little about photography. I follow no rules, no laws, and no advice.’ He wasn’t kidding, no cap. This segues into a montage, set to Spoon’s ‘I Turn My Camera On,’ featuring his timeless portraits of icons like John Lennon, Orson Welles, Michael Jordan, and Marilyn Monroe. What’s wild is that Avedon’s lighting makes every shot look like it was taken yesterday. His subjects appear exactly as we imagine them, yet also totally fresh and unfiltered – more intimately themselves than ever before. That’s the Avedon touch, but the real magic is how invisible his technique is, leaving viewers wondering, ‘Could I do that?’
Avedon himself would probably tell you that you’re not wrong, because he wasn’t about the technical jargon. Talk f-stops to him, and he’d zone out. His real ‘technique’ was all about how he approached a session. Isabella Rossellini shares in the film that other photographers would rapid-fire shots, but Avedon would only shoot occasionally, encouraging subjects to think, then shoot again, typically ending up with maybe ten shots total. He himself admitted to ‘wasting’ half an hour over coffee, only to snap the magic in the last five minutes of an hour-long session, usually against his signature white paper background.
That white paper background, as the documentary explains, has a backstory that hits different. Born in New York in 1923, Avedon would apparently blink and hold his eyes closed as a kid to keep images alive in his mind before he even had a camera. When he joined the U.S. Merchant Marines at 19, he landed in the photographic department, snapping roughly 100,000 portraits of enlisted men for ID cards. This was the photographic equivalent of peeling potatoes on KP duty, but it was here, shooting these military mug shots against a plain white background, that he saw ‘thousands of baffled faces.’ He realized how these photos revealed people, turning a thankless assignment into his core vision: the white background equalized everything, making each individual stand out as, well, an individual, with literally zero distractions.
He essentially became a head-on existential classicist, echoing Diane Arbus’s knack for highlighting what was subtly ‘off’ about a person. The report describes his famous shot of Lauren Hutton, head thrown back, breast popping out, looking perfectly composed like a Picasso sculpture, yet it was totally spontaneous. The iconic gazes Avedon captured weren’t planned; they just happened. Like Charlie Chaplin pranking the camera with devil horns in 1953, creating one of Avedon’s most famous images. As the film delves into, he wasn’t just recording subjects; he was capturing the ineffable dance between subject and artist, using each person to express something within himself. Chaplin wouldn’t have done those devil horns for just anyone, you feel me?
By the time the 1957 Hollywood musical ‘Funny Face’ dropped, featuring Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire as a photographer clearly based on Avedon, he was already a legend. He began to wield his power as part of his artistic method. The film recounts his 1957 shoot with Marilyn Monroe for ‘The Prince and the Showgirl.’ How do you photograph Marilyn, someone who was, highkey, the most prepared person alive to be photographed? After an entire day of joyous, full-splendor shots, the iconic image emerged at the very end: Marilyn, guard down, looking a bit sad and droopy for ten seconds. In that fleeting moment, the photograph captures the real Marilyn, or rather, the full woman behind the image – Norma Jean grown up, if you will.
‘Avedon’ is stacked with incredible stories and privileged glimpses into how he created his most famous images. He also turned his lens on the unfamous, like the Oklahoma oil workers he shot in 1980, and famously coaxed models into gravity-defying leaps for his models-in-motion series. He spent seven weeks in Vietnam capturing American generals and devised singular ways to photograph the Chicago 7, the Warhol Factory denizens, and the residents of the new American West – a series so raw and authentic that, according to the report, New York museums initially wanted nothing to do with it, proving he was way ahead of the curve. The documentary also recounts his reconciliation with his aging father through photography. While he funded his ritzy lifestyle with advertising work, like the surreal Obsession perfume TV spots, Avedon never saw it as a compromise. Over sixty years, there’s a breathtaking continuity between his portrait, fashion, and commercial work, all striving for the same goal: to open your eyes.
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Livia Dorne covers film, television, music, and pop culture with a keen editorial perspective. She delivers engaging commentary, reviews, and behind-the-scenes insights that keep readers connected to the entertainment world. Her style blends critique with storytelling.
