Richard Avedon - Portraits, First French Edition, Éditions du Chêne, 1976

A first French edition of Richard Avedon’s landmark Portraits, published by Éditions du Chêne in Paris in 1976, complete with its original typographic dust jacket. Bringing together Avedon’s penetrating black-and-white portraits of writers, artists, actors, political figures and other defining personalities of the twentieth century, the publication captures the uncompromising visual language that established him as one of the most influential portrait photographers of his generation. Stripped of elaborate settings and photographed with characteristic directness, Avedon’s subjects are isolated against minimal backgrounds, allowing gesture, expression and physical presence to become the focus of each image. Among the figures represented in the wider body of work are personalities such as Truman Capote, Andy Warhol, Ezra Pound and figures from American political and cultural life. The result deliberately moves away from conventional flattering portraiture toward something more psychologically exposed and confrontational. The Cary Collection The volume includes an essay by influential American art critic Harold Rosenberg and is distinguished by its full-page monochrome reproductions and several folding plates. The Richard Avedon Foundation itself records Portraits as one of Avedon’s principal publications of 1976 and credits Rosenberg’s accompanying essay. The Richard Avedon Foundation With its stark oversized typography, restrained white-and-grey design and substantial folio format, the book has become an immediately recognizable Avedon publication and an important document of twentieth-century photographic portraiture.