REMINISCENCES: PHOTOGRAPHER RICHARD AVEDON

The summer was the only real time I spent with my father. The rest of the year he was occupied with his New York City department store, Avedon’s Fifth Avenue. Before my father became a businessman, though, he was a teacher. In the summer of 1931, at the beach, he opened my eyes to the wonder of photography.

He explained that if the sun’s rays traveled through a magnifying glass, they could create fire. (Later that day I experimented at home and burned off the corners of the “good” carpet.) He also described how light passing through a negative onto a sensitive surface creates a positive image. I was nine and reasoned as follows: if the sun tanned my skin and if it burned through a negative to make a print, my skin might be like photographic paper.

The next morning I took one of my negatives of Louise, my seven-year-old sister, and with surgical tape attached it to my shoulder. I returned to the beach and burned the image onto my skin. And there it was, my father’s lesson–the shadow of my sister on my shoulder.