Richard Avedon Immortal: Portraits of Aging, 1951-2004

An unflinching exploration of aging from one of the twentieth centurys most influential photographers

For more than half a century, Richard Avedon sought to represent advancing age in the faces of the people he photographed. From his earliest years at Harpers Bazaar and Vogue through to the twenty-first century, Avedon routinely and audaciously broke the rule of flattering public personalities in his portraits. Instead, he chose to highlight the onslaught of what he called the avalanche of age, dramatizing the universal experience of getting older.

Accompanying a groundbreaking exhibition at The Image Centre at Toronto Metropolitan University and The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Immortal is the first book to delve into Avedons unflinching representation of aging throughout his career.

This elegant hardcover volume features nearly 100 portraits of cultural luminaries, each printed in striking tritone, such as Michelangelo Antonioni, Truman Capote, Marcel Duchamp, Duke Ellington, Toni Morrison, Patti Smith, and Stephen Sondheim, as well as one of Avedons last self-portraits. Texts by a star-studded cohort of authors, including Vince Aletti, Adam Gopnik, Paul Roth, and Galle Morel, shed new light on an under-represented element of Avedons practice.

Thoughtfully edited and beautifully produced, Immortal testifies emphatically to the determination with which people confront the relentless advance of mortality.