"That's the way I want it!"

PHOTOGRAPHY | RICHARD AVEDON       WORDS | ANDREW KAISER & KIRK BROMLEY

The year is 1990, the place Manhattan. Ghetto blasters boom from every corner. Gun battles break out in the hot, sticky nights. Hookers, bums, gangstaz, tourists and millionaires mingle on the hurly-burly streets. And above it all, skyscrapers loom like giant steel lollipops of capitalist promise. If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere - if it doesn’t kill you first.

Yet they say that for every patch of squalor in the big, mean city, there’s a success story. And indeed, if you look closely enough, you will see a young photography student from Norway signing a year’s lease on an apartment in Greenwich Village. In his eyes burns the hopeful ambition of a young dreamer. For he is here to fulfill the chance of a lifetime – to apprentice in the studio with one of the most famous fashion and art photographers ever – the legendary Richard Avedon. Little does he know what’s about to hit him.

Petter: I had just finished my photography courses at The Brooks Institute of Photography, and the next logical step at the time was to try and become an assistant to a well-known photographer. I wrote two letters – one to Arnold Newman and one to Irving Penn. I was fairly fresh at the time but a professor of mine informed me about Richard Avedon and insisted that I contact him as well. I wasn’t very familiar with his work but it was still worth a shot.

I must have written several letters to all three studios, and while I was still waiting for word from Newman and Penn, I was invited to New York to interview for an assistant position under Richard Avedon. I interviewed with the studio manager first but it wasn’t long before Avedon came down and looked over my portfolio and resume. It was known at the time that Avedon had good luck using students from Brooks so I knew I had an edge. Plus, we had both served in the military in our youth so we had that in common. There is camaraderie present when two men both mopped floors in the service and we both felt it. To my surprise, twenty-four hours after the interview took place I had the job and found myself taking up residence in New York City.

Up at 5 am. Out the door by 5:15. Grab a bagel and coffee to go, and hit the subway. F train crosstown. Transfer to the D uptown. Transfer to the B local, and in the studio by 6 am. Work all day. Work all night. Asleep by 1 am. Hopefully. Repeat. Every day, every week, all year long. And LOVIN’ IT!

Petter: I was the third assistant in the studio, which meant I had to do a little bit of everything. Everyday began at 6 am when I would hose down the pavement at the front of the studio before rushing off to pick up the catering that would be provided for the day’s shoot. Everything got handed to me, from picking up super models at the airport to delivering confetti for Liza Minelli; and, of course, warming up the chemical baths for that particular day’s darkroom work. If Richard Avedon wanted something done, you just did it and you didn’t ask questions.

I can recall several occasions getting a phone call early on a Sunday morning with a request from Avedon to pick up his morning danish. No matter what I had been doing the night before – and believe me, I found time to party at…and get blacklisted from…many a wild nightclub –
I just hopped out of bed and did it, no questions asked. It was a given among the assistants that what Avedon wanted you did your very best to get done. Our first job, of course, was to be studio assistants, but we were also Avedon’s helpers and that meant doing a whole lot of things that weren’t in the original job description. I learned right away not to argue with the master’s desires.

The most important skill a young artist can learn is patience. While it may be tempting to produce fast and furious, your best work often only occurs after numerous stages of trial and error. Yet convincing an eager novice of this fact can be hard – it’s something you need to learn not just by doing, but by observing in others. And such is probably the greatest benefit an apprenticeship can provide – the chance to watch a patient master take his time and get it right.

Petter: The working conditions were often tough and frustrating. After a shoot, Avedon would request a print from a negative he thought to be particularly successful. A team of darkroom technicians, including myself, would produce as many as thirty eleven-by-fourteen prints with various kinds of paper, contrast grades, and exposures, all of which had to be delivered on Avedon’s door by 8 am the next morning. In order for a small group of people to accomplish such a task, it meant we were often only getting one or two hours of sleep a night. If we were late with the prints, he would get so upset. Not because he was mean, but simply because he expected the best.

The following day, Avedon would lay the prints out on a table and mark off his favorite qualities in each version. He would tear off the corner of one print and match it up against another, trying to piece together the best characteristics to make what would be in his mind the perfect print. It was a little disheartening at first to see the work you did the night before ripped to shreds, but Avedon was a perfectionist with a vision. By the end of it we would always have this huge collage made from eight or nine different papers and contrasts that represented an idea of what the final print should be. “That’s the way I want it!” is what he would say in a loud and boisterous voice. Then we would all head back to the darkroom and go through the same process over and over, sometimes for up to a year before his vision could be fulfilled. There is a reason why Avedon was considered a master photographer; he was patient enough to wait for the perfect print.

To be a great artist, you have to be fierce toward your own work. As any musician will tell you, you can only perform a concerto with ease after hours and hours of mistakes. If you can’t sift through your creations and pick out the good from the bad, you’ll probably not amount to much. What separates a pro from an amateur is the tenacity to edit and the bravery to dispose of the less-than-perfect. Only in this way do you become the best. Only in this way do you approach the genius of a Richard Avedon.

Petter: Part of my job was spending several hours a day shredding negatives and prints that Avedon deemed less than perfect. He was terrified of people finding work with his name on it that didn’t meet his standards. Everyone around him would try and try to convince him not to do this but no matter what people said he would insist that it had to be done. I spent hours and hours shredding images of famous personalities like Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, presidents, super models, etc... all of them fantastic prints that people would have loved to see but Avedon simply wouldn’t have it.

After I shredded the prints I would watch box after box of material being taken out of the studio only to be burned so that no record of them existed. At the time I was confused by it; these were great images, and it just didn’t make sense to me from the perspective of historic value. Now, however, I admire his determination to only show what he felt was his best. In the end he will be remembered for his ferocity.

As ancient as artistry itself, apprenticeship is the boot camp of fame. Young idealists willing to work for next-to-nothing are taken in, chewed up, and spit out screaming. But, if they survive, they’ve developed the skills, tenacity, and guts needed to succeed in a dog-eat-dog world. And when that apprenticeship is with an artist as renowned, demanding and talented as Richard Avedon, surviving the experience can mean not only a career boost, but an ego boost as well. To live through Camp Avedon is to emerge better, stronger, and wiser...ready to take on anything.

Petter: Looking back on it, I think what makes Richard Avedon such an incredible photographer and memorable man in art history is his never-give-up attitude and radiant energy. When he would walk into the studio, he instantly drew attention; not in a negative way, but in a commanding and confident way. The pulse in the room would always increase during a shoot, and everybody felt it – from the studio staff and the models to the guy delivering the pastries.