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October 1, 2006
avedon on photography
And if a day goes by without my doing something related to photography, it's as though I've neglected something essential to my existence, as though I had forgotten to wake up. I know that the accident of my being a photographer has made my life possible.
The way I see is comparable to the way musicians hear, something extra sensory. Not judgmental. I don’t differentiate between an idea of what is beautiful and what is not. What I see is a reaffirmation of the many things I need to feel. It has to do with obsessive qualities, not explainable. I am a natural photographer. It is my language; I speak through my photographs more intricately, more deeply than with words.
I don't think pictures have to justify their existence by calling themselves works of art or photographic portraits. They are memories of a man; they are contradictory facets of an instant of his life as a subject - and of our lives as viewers. They are, as Barthes said, texts, and as such they exist to be read, interpreted, and argued over - not categorized and judged.
A portrait is not a likeness. The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion. There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.
Richard Avedon
Posted by amin at October 1, 2006 3:46 PM