Customer Reviews

An Autobiography

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Of course Richard Avedon is one of the most important photographers in this century. This is his retrospective book and it's very good. If you like Richard Avedon, this is an important book to own. If you are sitting on the fence about him, borrow your friends copy and, call it a day. An Autobiography is a great introduction to Avedon. However, for five bills, don't go gently into that dark night. This is a collector's copy and the price reflects that.

i found an open copy of this at the book store last night so i got to look at it for the first time. short of a small intro by avedon at the front, this book is ALL pictures. i believe it was 283 photos, mostly full page shots or each taking up the full spread. no captions. no text. no stories. just photos. the back has a great index with farily large thumbnails of all the photos along with caption info. this book is worth $100 (especially if they are selling "ansel adams at 100" for $100) and it's totally worth it. the spine is bound rather loosely, but that's so the pages lay flat from cover to cover. if you are an avedon fan, or just a fan of photography, this is one you don't want to miss.

This is a big and heavy book.
All pictures are black and white. No text, only pictures. The print is very good. Each picture cover all the page (much bigger than a A4). My only complain is the few number of pictures spread in two pages. I don't like pictures divided in this way.
Except for the two-pages pictures, the book oposes two pictures, one in each page. Many comparisons are poweful, funny or interesting, but others are not. For instance, see the pages with the snake-hunter and Truman Capote, or the pages with Dick Hickcock and his father, etc.
There are many portraits, a few fashion pictures (too few) and a lot of "reportage" pictures. Portraits are the most interesting pictures of the book.
The book is organized in three parts. The three parts combine the three types of pictures (portraits, fashion, reportage), but the mixture is different in each case. I love parts 1 and 2 but the selection of the part 3 is strange, with many pictures taken at a mental hospital, victims of the napalm in Vietnam, etc. Most of these pictures are heavily granulated.
To sum-up, the quality of the book is very high, very interesting, great prints... but the selection is not 100% of my liking in the third part of the book.

The binding of this very large (and photographically nice) book came loose. I returned it to Amazon for an exchange. They promised one for some 2-3 months, then told me they couldn't.