American portraitist and fashion photographer Richard Avedon is known for his glamorous shots, appearing on the pages of Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, and Elle, showcasing fashion, theater, and dance. His work is now being celebrated in Montreal for something often considered oppositional to the glamour that pulsed through his career: aging.
Richard Avedon's Immortal is on display at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts until August 9th, 2026. The exhibition represents portraits taken from 1951 to 2024 by the photographer.
Avedon's portraits with the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts embody the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal of Reduced Inequalities for their focus on centering older faces and bodies that are often forgotten.
Richard Avedon, born in New York City, started taking photographs fairly young, joining the Young Men's Hebrew Association (YMHA) camera club at 12 years old. He began doing freelance photography after World War II, working primarily for Harper's Bazaar. His work is known to focus on aesthetics, finding narratives in visual aesthetics. He is quoted as saying, from The Avedon Foundation, "My photographs don't go below the surface. I have great faith in surfaces. A good one is full of clues."
