His interest in photography began at an early age, and he joined the Young Men's Hebrew Association (YMHA) camera club when he was twelve years old. Capote offered an intimate look at the man on the other side of the lens, observing, “His brown and deceivingly normal eyes, so energetic at seeing the concealed and seizing the spirit, ceasing the flight of a truth, a mood, a face, are the important features.Richard Avedon (1923-2004) was born and lived in New York City.

“My concern is, how would you say, well, the human predicament only what I consider the human predicament may be simply my own,” Avedon told Capote, and the writer took note, including this quote in his 1959 essay for Observations, Avedon’s first monograph. In Monroe, Avedon saw extremes he recognised and understood, and gave her the space to be Norma Jeane rather than Marilyn, if only for a moment. He sits confidently, arms crossed, wide close-lipped smile creasing his face, while she stands behind him, draping herself across his back, wrapping her arms around his shoulders, nuzzling her head to his, the euphoria palpable. Avedon’s famous 1957 portrait of Marilyn Monroe looking exquisitely forlorn in a black sequin halter dress is paired with a portrait the artist took two days later of Monroe and her then-husband Arthur Miller. Relationships brings together Avedon’s individual portraits with portraits of couples and groups to consider what happens when you add a third (fourth, or even fifth) to the mix.

Featuring 100 photographs, the book brings together classic works like the 1957 portrait of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor in New York – looking unguardedly woeful and worn – and the 1963 portrait of basketball star Lew Alcindor (before he changed his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) on a New York street court in his uniform, looking like a supermodel. “These pictures don’t just happen,” says Senf, chief curator at the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, which houses the collection from which the photographs in Relationships are drawn. But by 1974, life had taken its toll, as Capote’s gaze is heavy, hooded eyes sunken inside a puffy, wrinkled face flecked with sunspots and topped by an ever-thinning pate. In the 1955 portrait, Capote plays the angelic ingénue, topless to boot, his head tilting back to the right, eyes closed, shoulders slipping away, his fame and fortune as sure as his boyish beauty. His 19 portraits of Truman Capote are the stuff of Southern Gothic novels when placed side by side, as they are in the book. Over a period of six decades, Avedon encountered some of the most influential people of his time, at times photographing them more than once – and the time between sittings tells a story unto itself.

Richard avedon pictures