Richard Avedon (1923-2004) revolutionized fashion photography starting in the post-World War II era and redefined the role of the fashion photographer. Anticipating many of the cultural cross-fertilizations that have occurred between high art, commercial art, fashion, advertising, and pop culture in the last twenty years, he created spirited, imaginative photographs that showed fashion and the modern woman in a new light.

One can't help but admire his iconoclastic stance in shaking up the chilly, static formulas that had been dominated by Europeans for years, injecting new stylistic innovations that would revolutionize fashion photography for years to come. By the 1950's his work was so influential he was the most imitated fashion photographer in the world.