Richard Avedon

6min 55sec

“One of the most powerful parts about movement is that its a constant suprise. Your don’t know what the fabric is going to do, what the hair is going to do, you can control it to a certain degree and then there’s the suprise. And also you have to remember that when I photograph the movement I have to anticipate, and by the time its happened its too late to photograph it. So there’s this terrific interchange between the moving figure and myself that is like dancing.”

1min

“In visual terms there has been nothing like photography in the history of the world, there’s no vocabulary for it. The vocabulary has to do with painting, photography literally stops something dead. It’s the death of the moment. The second a picture is taken that life is held and stopped and over and that moment is over. It’s part of the melancholy, part of the beauty of what is a photograph.”

Amazing that someone so concerned with movement in his image still sees them as stopping that movement dead. In a sense the more movement you try to capture the more severe the stopping of that movement looks. However it is so refreshing even now to see such extreme movement in Avedon’s images. I like the chaotic nature of the movement, its not half hearted jumping but full on leaping across the set. I would like to try and inspire that kind of movement in our images.