An irrepressible innovator, Avedon has consistently defied conventional expectations about what a portrait is supposed to look like..." - Maria Morris Hambourg and Mia Fineman For over 50 years, Richard Avedon (b. 1923) has captured the creative genius of our time with dazzling insight and incomparable style. Spanning the artist's entire career, from the late 1940s through his most recent work, Richard Avedon Portraits offers a superb selection of his photographic portraits. With uncompromising directness, Avedon portrayed his subjects against a white background, with no extraneous details to distract from the essential specificity of face, gaze, dress, and gesture. This challenging innovation, coupled with the artist's intense interest in his subjects and mastery of his craft, resulted in mesmerizing portraits—among them Truman Capote, Willem de Kooning, Samuel Beckett, Francis Bacon, and Marilyn Monroe, as well as the uncelebrated Americans of his project, "In the American West" that rival the greatest works in the portrait tradition. Richard Avedon Portraits is published to accompany a major exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. With its innovative accordion-style design and superb reproductions, the book is a virtual stand-alone mini-exhibition in its own right.

Richard Avedon is one of the most influential photographers of the second half of the 20th century. His portrait work comprises an authoritative record of our era. His many books have set a standard for photographic publishing. As a staff photographer for Harper's Bazaar and later for Vogue, Avedon redefined what a fashion photograph is. In 1992 he was named the first staff photographer in the history of The New Yorker. Maria Morris Hambourg is Curator in Charge of the Department of Photographs at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. She has written and contributed to many books on the history of photography. Mia Fineman is a Research Assistant in the Department of Photographs at The Metropolitan Museum.