Richard Avedon <> Avalon Hodges

Just discovered that my sister was one in one of Richard Avedon's last photographs before he died in Oct of 2004. Wasn't a portrait, but a group shot. She is the princess with the little dog.

from an article in The New Yorker, Nov. 1 2004:

Although, in the course of a sixty-year career, Richard Avedon was known mainly for his originality in portraits and fashion photography, he also confronted the realms of politics, power, suffering, and war. He documented the civil-rights movement in the South, the Vietnam War, mental institutions, and, in a portfolio called “The Family,” the Washington establishment of thirty years ago.

Earlier this year, Avedon decided that he would try to capture a sense of the country in the midst of a crucial Presidential election campaign. He travelled well beyond his studio on East Seventy-fifth Street, visiting the Conventions in Boston and New York, and, among other places, Killeen, Texas; Reno, Nevada; and San Francisco. After more than fifty sessions, he also had a series of sittings scheduled for his return East—with Donald Rumsfeld, William Rehnquist, Alan Greenspan, and William Kristol—but on September 25th in San Antonio, where he had been working with Iraq veterans and was preparing for a sitting at a school, he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage. Six days later, he died, and this portfolio, “Democracy,” was left unfinished.