This is the first publication to survey Richard Avedon’s influential advertising work. Spanning a sixty-year period, it consequently charts the evolution of advertising in the modern world. As very few original rolls of film survived Avedon’s shredder, this book is made up of reproductions of over 300 printed advertisements.
The content, an eclectic mix of photographic and typographic styles, clash in a layout that sets out to emulate the density of a glossy magazine. Placed against each other, the full-bleed images are given little space to breath – the opposite of the spacious and controlled pace of an archetypal Avedon monograph. This approach is perpetuated across every panel within the book including its cover, jacket and endpapers. Against this cacophony, a calm counterpoint is established by an omnipresent white band that carries the image captions.
