Brooke Shields Breaks Down Richard Avedon's Most Iconic Photos | Life in Looks | Vogue

I said Thank you Mr Don and he said Thank You Drake we got out on the street and my mom said you called him Mr Don and I said oh okay and she said and he called You Drake and I thought oh great well we're even hi I'm Brooke Shields and I'm going to be taking you through some of Richard avedon's most iconic photographs [Applause] oh I love this photo I remember the first time I saw this photo my mom had shown it to me this is a photograph featuring Susie Parker she was a very very famous model at the time and worked a great deal with Richard Avedon I think that he loved working with Susie Parker because she was not only so beautiful but a willing subject you know willing to have fun willing to throw herself into the environment and I can imagine him lying on the ground sort of looking up to make them Larger than Life and him instructing them to be joyous and have fun and be playful oh I have this photo in my living room this is one of the most beautiful iconic photos of Marilyn Monroe in my opinion ever taken and it came to be known as sad Marilyn and what I find so fascinating about it is that dick Abaddon was able to shoot many other photographs in this series but that this came at the end at a moment when it was clear that she felt comfortable enough to fully let her guard down I think avadon was always very intent on capturing duality in his subjects sort of a truth and a mask at the same time and I think it became something that many people trusted in him he photographed so many very important iconic figures and he shot their portraits and in each one of them you see a side of the person we might not necessarily have seen this is Danielle Luna and she was a very important model at the time avadon decided to choose Luna for a spread in a guest edited issue of Harper's Bazaar in 1965. it was very controversial he was not meant to feature a black model doing this was unheard of at the time and after all the criticism that he received he decided to leave Harper's Bazaar and move to Vogue Audrey Hepburn this is a fascinating photograph and a fascinating period of time I believe in avadon's life because he wanted to play with our image of beauty he got this inspiration from looking at contact sheets and really sort of realizing the limitations of Photography in and of itself I grew up being told by my mother that she was the most beautiful woman in the world and Richard Avedon felt the same he was quoted as saying the second the color leaves her face I know she's ready to work he would wait just long enough for whoever you walked in as to leave your face what he was saying about vershka I think is very important in understanding him because in my opinion he always had a strong contradiction within him and in every photo Twiggy I love twiki this Photograph was all about the hair and it was a wig our Gallant was the hairdresser for this photo he was very known for the movement of hair and what's interesting is you feel the movement in the hair by way of the light that Richard avadon uses and yet her face is almost Frozen in time and there's this youthful quality to the way the light hits her sweet beautiful face and then there's this power that that's in the hair and that's all shown with light Twiggy said of this photo that when she saw the photograph she felt that it was the first time that she had been photographed truly as a woman and not just a teenage cookie as she came to know herself oh me I remember being taken to his Studio after school with my mom I had already done pretty baby and had been a model but I remember seeing this photograph of myself and being so shocked because it was unlike any other photograph I had seen of myself he did capture something that I wasn't giving him per se this to me is color drained from a face and yet you see something going on in the eyes okay oh me again this was one of my 14 faux covers we started getting into a different mentality with regards to covers really looking down the barrel of the lens nobody was allowed in the studio he would pick a song that he knew I loved and blast it repeatedly I think the song was upside down by Diana Ross I was obsessed with it and he knew that and it was as if it was this bizarre Mantra where we went into this other world for a little while and he never overshot he didn't keep you there forever you know eight ten clicks maybe 12 and then that was it we moved on and more of me the world needs more of me well this Photograph changed the course of my life and what I always felt was even though this was full body to me the expression is still locked into dick it was groundbreaking it was shocking to people it was accompanied with a whole series of commercials drawing upon literary references and specific verbiage and Darwinism by natural selection filters out those genes better equipped than others to endure in the environment this whole campaign really lost in controversy based on the interpretation of one commercial in which I ask a rhetorical question you want to know what comes between me and my Calvin's nothing oh the Uproar all the puritanical America was just going to jump down our throats and tell us how inappropriate we were all of the dialogue in these commercials were designed to have duality in them and that's what also made them unique but to single out just that one line and not even understand it in the the context with within which it was meant felt very narrow to me uh okay this is a beautiful and iconic photograph of a friend of mine Nastasia Kinski with a snake and then at the last minute he captures the snake licking her ear it was the most incredible photograph and poster that sold out if there was an internet it would have broken the internet I think the symbolism of having this photo with her really signified the Garden of Eden and Eve and sort of the fall of Man and the power of the female there's such innocence and sexuality her face is so relaxed and so beautiful and so in control and that was what he could do he could do that and I'm sure this was just one click oh I loved this campaign I think this definitely sort of represents and embodies a lot of what Versace was able to do and what Richard avadon was able to bring to life the new version of a modern woman who was very sexy but also with the colors and The Pastels and the pinks and the mini skirts and the socks there's also this playful sort of nudging of this sort of voyage from innocence to experience okay this is a beautiful portrait of Kate Moss she's young and Youthful but she is so strong and so sexy at the same time I think this was so clearly in brilliant Evolution from my Calvin era and this was the new CK era it's so vastly different than what we shot and it had to be but yet again he was able to re-invent and discover a very new fresh way of looking at something it reflects a huge change that was happening in the way we saw advertising and in the way the envelope was being pushed but in a very different way in a very in-your-face way and the fact that it's black and white versus the color of the 80s and and the stripping away of of everything but the subject I love his self-portraits this says what a true artist he was he was always thinking always pensive always introspective always searching for more for real for surprise for Unique for one of a kind he was stubborn and passionate and so focused and so driven and such a perfectionist you can just see it I love where he's got his eyes closed that signifies to me that maybe he just was blinking but that's just him behind his eyes his eyes are everything because they always saw us and revealed us and people well that's it for this I hope you've enjoyed taking this journey with me through some of Richard avadon's most iconic photographs happy birthday dick or should I say Mr Don [Music]

Channel: Vogue

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Keywords: avedon photos, brooke shields, brooke shields life in looks, brooke shields life in looks vogue, brooke shields portrait, brooke shields vogue interview, fashion, life in looks, life in looks richard avedon, life in looks richard avedon photos, model photos, richard avedon, richard avedon brooke shields, richard avedon life in looks, richard avedon models, vogue

Id: wE5ER5yMrns

Length: 10min 29sec (629 seconds)

Published: Mon May 15 2023