©The Richard Avedon Foundation

London’s Gagosian Gallery is pleased to announce the premiere of Avedon: Women this autumn, a selection of avant-garde images taken by the late iconic fashion photographer Richard Avedon.

In collaboration with The Richard Avedon Foundation, the organisation he founded prior to his death in 2004, the exhibition will present some of Avedon’s most famous photographs of models in motion from the 1960s and 1970s. It will celebrate the female figures who danced, lunged and jumped before his camera: the leitmotif of Avedon’s fashion photography.

At a time when fashion – and the role of women – dramatically changed, Richard Avedon revolutionised the art of fashion photography with his gritty realism and non-conformist attitude towards beauty. Instead of using models devoid of personality or emotion, Avedon set his models in action to appear questioning, authoritative, unruly, vivacious, extroverted and confidently alive. Combining experimental design, choreography and acute compositional awareness, Avedon’s images set new benchmarks in the history of fashion photography.

“I’ve worked out of a series of nos,” Avedon once said. “No to exquisite light, no to apparent compositions, no to the seduction of poses or narrative. And all these nos force me to the ‘yes’. I have a white background. I have the person I’m interested in and the thing that happens between us.”

In his sixty-year career, Avedon shot countless editorials for Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and many other titles throughout the 20^th century and into the 21^st. Avedon: Women features household names like Ingrid Boulting, Gisele Bündchen and Twiggy. In an unforgettable image from 1968, Twiggy’s long and lustrous hair floats upward from her shoulders, as if underwater.

The exhibition will run until October 26 at Gagosian Davies Street. Continuing to capture Richard Avedon’s great skill and observation, this exhibition will be followed up by the gallery’s Beverly Hills counterpart in November.

Website:

Address: 17-19 Davies Street, London, W1K 3DE