Born in 1923 in New York City, Richard Avedon began photographing in camera clubs as a teenager. After joining the US Merchant Marine in 1942 he served as Photographer’s Mate Second Class during World War II, photographing thousands of portraits of serviceman for ID purposes. In 1944, he left the Merchant Marine, launching a career as a professional photographer, particularly in the field of fashion images.
One of his earliest and most significant clients was the American women’s fashion magazine Harper’s Bazaar. After apparently not being given access to the use of a studio, Avedon soon revealed his adaptability, working with models in real-life locations: in public spaces, on the street, at circuses, in bars and nightclubs. Avedon also revelled in the capacity of photography to capture the personality of his subjects – his photographs show models being playful, active and more natural in their movements – resulting in a unique sense of spontaneity in his images.
In August 1947, Avedon travelled to Paris on assignment for Harper’s Bazaar. Through the assistance of the magazine’s editor, Carmel Snow, Avedon created numerous images of models wearing garments by French couturier Christian Dior. Dior had debuted his first collection in February of that year – a show that was celebrated as transforming postwar fashion. Dubbed the ‘New Look’ by Snow, the collection was criticised by some as extravagant in its generous use of fabrics while austerity and rationing was still in force and praised by others as heralding a new era of confidence and optimism for fashion, women and the city. It was the beginning of a long-term association between Avedon and Dior, with their careers interweaving and impacting each other over the subsequent decades.
One of the iconic images created during that summer in Paris was Avedon’s Renée, the New Look of Dior, Place de la Concorde, Paris, August 1947. The photograph depicts the model Renée Breton wearing a Dior skirt suit in the famed public square in Paris. From a slightly elevated perspective, Avedon shoots Renée with her back to the camera as she gently twists, sending her skirt, with its excess of material, swinging in an undulating circle around her. Three young men wearing suits stride past her – one looking into the camera, one at the model. Beyond them, the presence of two others are indicated by their encroaching shadows, adding to the sense of dynamism as the swing of the fabric, the movement of the pedestrians, and the lines of the shadows and paving stones all combine to create an energetic and graphic play of shapes and forms and movement.
An alternate photograph from this shoot, which showed the model from the waist down, her swinging skirt overlaid with the shadow of a nearby balustrade, eventually appeared in the October 1947 issue of Harper’s Bazaar. However, this version was included in Avedon’s 1978 Paris portfolio of photographs, in which he selected eleven works made between 1947–57 to be reissued in limited editions on the occasion of his retrospective exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Maggie Finch is Curator, Photography at the National Gallery of Victoria.