![]() ![]() ![]() Avedon, who was born in 1923, had a confidant for his affairs in Stevens, who was his devoted studio director and “work wife. ![]() The book also provides another reason why Avedon may have preferred not to live with his wife: his bisexuality. Something Personal devotes an illuminating chapter to the two men’s time at Vogue in the 1960s and 1970s, after Avedon had first come to prominence at Harper’s Bazaar. He never enjoyed the same level of conjugal harmony as Irving Penn, whom Avedon considered his only rival among living photographers. On page 8, the book claims that Avedon said to Norma Stevens and her husband: Did I ever tell you that Dorian Leigh and I won first prize in a Charleston contest at the Tavern on the Green. ![]() His long second marriage, to Evelyn Franklin, which lasted until her death, was not blissful. For years, he chose to live in close proximity to his work partly for personal reasons. For decades after his emergence onto the scene in 1946, he was a dominant influence on the industry thanks to the energy, imagination and willingness to take risks that he brought to his work. Aronson, in their capacious and valuable new Avedon biography Something Personal, call “incontestably the most celebrated single image in the history of fashion photography.” Avedon ushered me upstairs to his living quarters. Richard Avedon was one of the all-time-great fashion photographers. As I went in, I filed past a giant print of “Dovima with Elephants,” the 1955 photograph that Norma Stevens and Steven M.L. ![]()
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