What Critics Say About ‘Avedon,’ Streaming Now on Netflix

Academy Award-winning filmmaker Ron Howard’s new documentary about Richard Avedon, succinctly titled just Avedon, has arrived on Netflix, and is being lauded by critics. Early indications suggest it’s a must-watch, especially for photography fans.

“‘Avedon’ tells us much about the man, as remembered by his intimates at the New Yorker (Tina Brown, Adam Gopnik, Mr. Lahr, Hilton Als), where, in 1992, he became its first staff photographer. His gallerist and dealer, Larry Gagosian, adds much about Avedon the businessman and says a ‘Dovima’ once sold for $2 million. And we hear from many of the models with whom he worked over the years, including Beverly Johnson, Twiggy, Penelope Tree, Lauren Hutton and Isabella Rossellini, who always has something insightful to add and does so here,” writes The Wall Street Journal‘s John Anderson.

“The most personal and moving recollections, though, come from Avedon’s son, John, and from the subject himself, who among other things remembers that throughout his childhood, all the formal Avedon family photos included a dog. ‘We never owned a dog,’ he says. And while he bemoans ‘the sadness of borrowed dogs,’ the conclusion is left to us viewers: That Avedon learned, early on, that the image was everything.”

While Anderson’s review is unscored, it’s undoubtedly positive.

Over at Variety, Owen Gleiberman describes Howard’s Avedon as a “thrilling documentary.”

‘Avedon,’ Ron Howard’s documentary about the legendary photographer, is a fantastic movie. It’s the best documentary Ron Howard has made (my favorite before this: ‘The Beatles: Eight Days a Week’), and it’s been edited in a way that’s so supple and artful that its technique should be studied in filmmaking classes. (The film’s editor is Andrew Morreale.) Woven through the movie are hundreds of photographs that were shot by Richard Avedon, and there’s no question that the images are stunning, but the way the movie layers them into your consciousness is nearly musical in its finesse. And that helps to tell the very large story ‘Avedon’ is telling: how Richard Avedon changed the metaphysics of photography, shifting the way we see the world.

Gleiberman adds that Howard’s new documentary does a superb job of showing how Avedon, on the one hand, was engrossed in the world of high fashion and on the other, fascinated by much more important, human struggles and activism. The critic likewise notes that Avedon’s photography remains truly timeless, captivating, and inspiring.

For those who want to learn all about the technical details of Avedon’s photography, they might find Howard’s film lacking. It’s not because Howard doesn’t care, though, it’s because Avedon didn’t.

“Talk to him about f-stops and he would glaze over,” Gleiberman writes. It is another review without a score, but the praise is immense.

Film critic Peyton Robinson of Roger Ebert gives Avedon four stars, noting that Avedon is perhaps the “greatest portrait photographer who ever lived.”

“Scaling ISO, aperture, and shutter speeds was not his prowess; his humanity was. Through bewitching charm and empathy, Avedon harvested an evocative truth from each portrait session,” Robinson writes.

“Long before Avedon picked up a camera, photography had to earn its respect. Once it did, the practice still had stipulations: rigidities and qualifiers that gatekept which images got the special title of “art.” Fashion images were captured to look like paintings. Avedon made unabashed, unashamed photographs. He made an image not about the clothes, the clout, or the resume, but the root of a person.”

“The film is sleek and energetic and looks fantastic, offering a bounty of images, including many of the most famous ones; it has something of the feel of a magazine layout without ever trying to look like a magazine,” writes Robert Llyod for Los Angeles Times.

Time‘s Stephanie Zacharek calls Avedon a “gracefully constructed documentary about a great American photographer.”

“Avedon is a road map through his career, a lifetime of looking at faces and striving to capture the life that animates them, before it vanishes forever,” Zacharek concludes.

Like her fellow critics, Zacharek touches on the more difficult subject matter in Avedon, including the photographer’s difficult upbringing, complicated family life, and lifelong passion for photography and the power it offered.

While there aren’t enough scored critic reviews for Avedon to earn a Tomatometer score at the time of writing, every review counted thus far is positive. It is well on its way to being a certified fresh documentary and so far, all critics agree, it’s extremely well-made, enduringly fascinating, and an honest and compelling look at Richard Avedon, among the greatest and most accomplished photographers in history.

Image creditsNetflix