RICHARD AVEDON

How He and Dior Revolutionised Fashion Photography

The massive breakthrough in Richard Avedon’s career came in 1948, when he was collaborating with the house of Dior. For Dior’s New Look, Avedon went to Paris to photograph the couturier’s second show. And then, he did something that was never seen before in the fashion world: he broke away from the decades-old traditional way of photographing fashion. The frozen-in-time, statue-like look of Horst P. Horst or Beaton’s pastiches of 18th century portraits were all about the stillness of formality; the presentation of models simply being coat hangers. Avedon however broke up that dignified image, enlivening his models and introducing a sense of action into his photographs. The models in his pictures weren’t still statues, but living beings who danced and leaped and moved in blurs.