Richard Avedon treated his models with an unparalleled empathy. His high-contrast black-and-white photos zeroed in on what it meant to be human, capturing his subjects in intense detail, whether it was a pedestrian, a civil-rights activist, or stars like Marilyn Monroe and Alfred Hitchcock. All he needed was a face and a stark white background.
“My photographs don’t go below the surface. I have great faith in surfaces,” Avedon once said. “A good one is full of clues.”
Today, Netflix dropped the first trailer for Avedon, a new documentary directed by Ron Howard that traces the photographer’s life in fashion and art. The film compiles archival footage and snapshots of the artist’s extensive body of work, spliced with voiceovers from Avedon and people who worked closely with him, such as Twiggy and Isabella Rossellini. The new documentary is slated to start streaming on November 11.
A young Richard Avedon in the studio
“I can’t divide fashion from the way we live,” Avedon says in the trailer. The photographer, who died in 2004, changed the way people thought about fashion photography, attempting to strip away the celebrity veneer in favor of relatability. The new documentary focuses on how he encouraged even the biggest stars to let their mask drop, with firsthand accounts from models who worked with him. The documentary features examples from his tenures working with Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, Life, and Look, among many others.
Avedon will tell the full story of the photographer’s career, underlining his interest in documenting the living history of mid-century America. He often left the studio to capture anti-Vietnam or Civil Rights Movement protests. Prominent civil-rights figures like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. became Avedon’s models. The trailer also shows photographs of Avedon and his high school friend James Baldwin. The two collaborated on Nothing Personal, featuring Avedon’s photograph next to Baldwin’s meditation on race and American freedom.
This 104-minute documentary seeks to capture the essence of a man who devoted his life to that same cause. It features archival footage and new interviews, and in many cases it lets the art speak for itself.