AVEDON

Norma Stevens knew legendary photographer Richard Avedon-- both professionally and personally-- more intimately than anybody alive. As his business partner and confidante for three decades, she had the ultimate insider’s view into his complicated psyche and revolutionary work methods.

For decades Richard Avedon was the star photographer forHarper's Bazaarand thenVogue- he singlehandedly invented the concept of the supermodel. He depicts the epitome of glamour from the mid 1940's through the millennium. When he enlarged his focus to embrace portraiture, he virtually reinvented the genre, creating the images that continue to define the America of his time.

An intimate, shockingly candid portrait of the most famous photographer of the 20th century by his closest collaborator, Norma Stevens, whom Avedon acknowledged as both "the soul and the engine of my working life and my great friend." Norma Stevens, Avedon's business partner and confidante for 30 years, and Steven M. L. Aronson, a veteran author and journalist, traces Avedon's life from his humble New York childhood to his death in 2004 at the age of 81 while on a shoot forThe New Yorker(Tina Brown had anointed him the magazine's first-ever staff photographer in 1992).

AVEDON: Something Personal elucidates his multifaceted career, which encompassed such groundbreaking and controversial bodies of work as his brutally honest portraits of his father in old age and his "In the American West" series. Stevens and Aronson interviewed more than 250 of Avedon's friends, lovers, associates, assistants, museum professionals and art dealers, and fashion models and portrait sitters. Included are the first-hand reminiscences of Mike Nichols, Twyla Tharp, Calvin Klein, David Remnick, Naomi Campbell, Jerry Hall, Linda Evangelista, Adam Gopnik, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Isaac Mizrahi, Bruce Weber, Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington, Donatella Versace, Jann Wenner, Isabella Rossellini, and dozens more.

And thus this book is not only the ultimate insider's view into the life and psyche of a legend, but it is also an extraordinary snapshot of a time in history. Avedon famously photographed Jacqueline and John F. Kennedy, Judy Garland, Coco Chanel, Andy Warhol, Prince, Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, and on and on. His friends included Truman Capote and James Baldwin (with each of whom he collaborated on a book), Leonard Bernstein, Twyla Tharp, Mike Nichols, and Jerome Robbins. The lead character in the musicalFunny Facewas based on his aura and his career, and was played by no less than Fred Astaire.

Author Norma Stevens was a top advertising copywriter and creative director on Madison Avenue (a self-described "Madwoman") when Avedon made her his business partner in 1976. She collaborated with him on all commercial, editorial, and fine arts projects, traveled the world with him for his ad campaigns and museum exhibitions, presided over many of his sittings, and was the repository of all of his confidences.

In his Last Will and Testament, Avedon created the Richard Avedon Foundation and appointed Norma Stevens its director. In the five years that she led it, she initiated international gallery shows and museum exhibitions and oversaw the publication of five books of Avedon photographs down to the last detail. In 2012 she co-edited the bookNew York at Night: Photography After Dark. The co-author, Steven M.L. Aronson, who first met Richard Avedon in 1970, is the author ofHypeand the co-author of the Edgar Award-winningSavage Grace. A former book editor, he has written forVanity Fair, Vogue, Interview, New York, Esquire, Architectural Digest, andThe Nation. Both authors live in New York City.

Avedon had encouraged Norma Stevens to someday tell the truth about his life, and that is what she has done. Like Avedon's own defining photographs of celebrities, she succeeds in giving us the person beneath the surface, in all his prodigious - and suffering - humanity.