natalia's {photography}: Bio

Natalia Goretzky,lives in small town BC. Is currently 16 and going to school at NVSS. Loves taking pictures, scrapbooking, knitting and creating art. Is constantly listening to music and looking for new inspiration.

self portrait:

my perspective:

in action:

my story:

who am i, really?

Richard Avedon

Richard Avedon is one of the premier American portrait photographers; his portraits have filled the country’s finest magazines for over 50 years. He was born in 1923 in New York, his father loved photography and gave him his first camera when he was 9: a Kodak Brownie¹. At 19 he dropped out of school and joined the Merchant Marines photography section, in 1944 he got a job as a photographer for a department store. After 2 years he was “found” by an art director at Harper’s Bazaar and began producing work for them as well as Vogue, Look, Rolling Stones and many other magazines. In his early years he did most of his work in advertizing though his real passion was portraiture and its ability to express the essence of the subject². Avedon’s artistic style brought a sense of sophistication and authority to portraits, his ability to set his subjects at ease is what helps him create such timeless intimate photographs. He is famous for him minimalism, great lighting and white backdrops, which has helped him maintain a unique style of his own. Avedon’s work often contains only a portion of the person being photographed, a sense of movement for spontaneity, and the dark outline of the film which frames the photograph. He has collaborated with many artists, created books and continued working in the magazine industry taking some of the most famous portrait of the decades for Vogue during the 1970s and 80s. Avedon’s pictures often expressed his ideological and political beliefs, he was a determined photographer, and a creator of female icons. He was voted one of the ten greatest photographers in the world by Popular Photography magazine, received an honorary doctorate from the Royal college of Art in London in 1989 and has had 50 years of his work put together in the retrospective “Richard Avedon: Evidence” in the Whitney Museum. He died Oct. 1, 2004.

I like Richard Avedon’s work because it’s not typical portraiture, its more flowing, out of the box and full of movement. I like picture A because she’s in an evening dress looking like she’s about to go to a party yet there she is posed with elephants it’s just sort of unexpected and whimsical. I chose picture B of Twiggy because it’s not really in focus, her mass of flowing hair just takes up the picture yet you’re still drawn to her face, her expression makes you want to know what she’s looking at and what she’s thinking. Picture C, of John Ford I find very intriguing just because of his expression and how the portrait has captured every detail of his face and eye patch. I really like how Avedon had captured the essence of his subjects in his photographs and black and white photography though I never do much of it myself.

Photos

A)Dovima with elephants, 1955