Probably the biggest mistake I made during my early years as a glossy-magazine journalist happened in December 1993, when I was a style editor at Harper’s Bazaar. Shortly before Christmas, editor in chief Liz Tilberis handed me the plum assignment of profiling Richard Avedon, for a 13-page spread produced by Wendy Goodman. As we had a three-month lead time for stories back then, the article was pegged to Avedon’s Whitney Museum retrospective “Evidence,” opening in late March 1994.
I had only met Avedon once before, in 1990, at the wedding of his son, John, to Maura Moynihan, held at his cliffside Montauk beach house. But on this occasion, I had the photographer nearly to myself, and my visits with him took place in the city, at his East 75th Street home and studio. There, the master spoke to me with disarming candor about his upbringing and his work, and how, in some odd ways, the triumvirate ruling Bazaar at the start of his career—Carmel Snow, Alexey Brodovitch, and Diana Vreeland—mirrored the Avedon family’s own insular dynamic. Most affecting were his reminiscences about his beautiful little sister Louise, who died at 40 in a mental institution. “She was so lovely and so shy no one recognized the pain there,” he said.