A photographic portrait is a picture of someone who knows he is being photographed, and what he does with this knowledge is as much a part of the photograph as what he's wearing or how he looks.

— Richard Avedon

A portrait is not a likeness. The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion. There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.

— Richard Avedon

Faces are the ledgers of our experience.

— Richard Avedon

I hate cameras. They interfere, they're always in the way. I wish: if I could work with my eyes alone.

— Richard Avedon

We all perform. It's what we do for each other all the time, deliberately or nationally. It's a way of telling about ourselves in the hope of being recognized as what we'd like to be.--PERFORMANCE

— Richard Avedon