In the interests of historical truth, I feel that I should reveal that Avedon took not one, but two photographs of my brother and me. The first sitting was held in Heywood Hill, a difficult and cramped setting for Avedon’s style of pared down focus on the physical and facial features of the sitter, with the books on the shelves a distraction. So, he was dissatisfied with the result. That was why we were invited to what was in fact a second sitting in a South London studio where the background had been whited out. The reason I suppressed the account of the first sitting was that Avedon gave a lecture to a packed audience in the Queen Elizabeth Hall (I had been asked to book it) in which he stated proudly that he had never had to retake a photograph and I did not want to reveal that he had done so nearly the day before.
and the image?
Am working on it with the Foundation. Charles