Signed by Richard Avedon, this exhibition catalogue accompanied the definitive retrospective of the acclaimed photographer’s work, which opened at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art in 1994. It was the first of his shows to travel both within the United States—to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts—and throughout Europe, with stops at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Palazzo Reale in Milan, and the National Portrait Gallery in London. Providing an unprecedented view of fifty years of Avedon’s work, the book reproduces more than six hundred of his photographs.

Copublished by Random House and Eastman Kodak Company, this sizable catalogue was edited by Mary Shanahan. Curator Jane Livingston’s text “The Art of Richard Avedon” provides a compelling analysis of his career. Essayist Adam Gopnik observes in his contribution, “The Light Writer,” that “Avedon attempts, in his white-background portraits, to replace false poetry with what he sees as real poetry rooted in contradiction.” The book’s comprehensive illustrated chronology accompanies a list of Avedon’s exhibitions and bibliography.