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I Am, And Forever Will Be, Devastated By The Gift Of Audrey Hepburn Before My Camera. I Cannot Lift Her To Greater Heights. She Is Already There. I Can Only Record. I Cannot Interpret Her. There Is No Going Further Than Who She Is. She Has Achieved In Herself Her Ultimate Portrait.

-Richard Avedon

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I Am, And Forever

Richard Avedon

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I Am, And Forever Will Be, Devastated By The Gift Of Audrey Hepburn Before My Camera. I Cannot Lift Her To Greater Heights. She Is Already There. I Can Only Record. I Cannot Interpret Her. There Is No Going Further Than Who She Is. She Has Achieved In Herself Her Ultimate Portrait.

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Sometimes I Think All My Pictures Are Just Pictures Of Me.

My Parents Put The New Yorker In My Crib. I Saw Vogue And Vanity Fair Around The House Before I Could Read.

A Portrait Isn't A Fact But An Opinion - An Occasion Rather Than A Truth.

People, Unprotected By Their Roles, Become Isolated In Beauty And Intellect And Illness And Confusion.

I Know That The Accident Of My Being A Photographer Has Made My Life Possible.

He Sleeps Fastest Who Sleeps Alone.

The Pictures Have A Reality For Me That The People Don't. It Is Through The Photographs That I Know Them.

For Hours She Danced And Sang And Flirted And Did This Thing That's-she Did Marilyn Monroe. And Then There Was The Inevitable Drop. And When The Night Was Over And The White Wine Was Over And The Dancing Was Over, She Sat In The Corner Like A Child, With Everything Gone. I Saw Her Sitting Quietly Without Expression On Her Face, And I Walked Towards Her But I Wouldn't Photograph Her Without Her Knowledge Of It. And As I Came With The Camera, I Saw That She Was Not Saying No.

A Portrait Photographer Depends Upon Another Person To Complete His Picture. The Subject Imagined, Which In A Sense Is Me, Must Be Discovered In Someone Else Willing To Take Part In A Fiction He Cannot Possibly Know About.

A Photographic Portrait Is A Picture Of Someone Who Knows He Is Being Photographed

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I've Worked Out Of A Series Of No's. No To Exquisite Light, No To Apparent Compositions, No To The Seduction Of Poses Or Narrative. And All These No's 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.

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There's Always Been A Separation Between Fashion And What I Call My 'deeper' Work. Fashion Is Where I Make My Living. I'm Not Knocking It. It's A Pleasure To Make A Living That Way. It's Pleasure And Then There's The Deeper Pleasure Of Doing My Portraits. It's Not Important What I Consider Myself To Be, But I Consider Myself To Be A Portrait Photographer.

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