How Did Richard Avedon Influence The Civil Rights Movement

Throughout the decade of the 1960’s the well-known photographer Richard Avedon produced some of his most famous works. Richard Avedon was born May 12, 1923, in a middle class family. He was the son of a retail business man which led to him living a pretty lenient childhood. Avedon, uses his photography of the civil rights movement, Vietnam war and the counterculture of the time period to show the dramatic changes of society during the 1960’s. The 1960’s were filled of different with many aspects that influenced Richard Avedon and his photographs during that time period. For example, one major aspect that inspired Richard was the Civil Rights movement that took place throughout the sixties. During this time period most of Americas African

The major cause going into the Vietnam war was to prevent the Northern Vietnam’s Communism from spreading into Southern Vietnam and from there this would halt the spreading of Communism into other South Eastern Asian countries. All though the war did not start in the Sixties but rather the Fifties, the was escalated into something big during the sixties. Because of this when JFK ascended to the Presidency he acted in 1963 by deploying around 16,000 American soldiers in Vietnam. The mass insertion of American troops was not enough in fighting the communist which resulted in the US dropping a large a bulk of bombs into Northern Vietnam. These bomb were far more than what the US had used in World War 2. These bomb were dropped carelessly on the North which resulted in injuring and killing many innocent Civilian which include many women and children. This is significant because the effects and consequences that the civilians encountered impacted Richard Avedon. This is evident because throughout the sixties he took countless photographs of Vietnamese children and women that were hurt and felt the horrific effects of the US bombardments. The Vietnamese were not the only source of inspiration coming from the war, the American troops also seemed to touch Avedon as he also took photographs of them. For example, in 1968 when the Vietcong

This counterculture was a revolt against what was the norm in society during the time. The counterculture was the people of America turning non-conformists towards society’s rule of the Fifties. One of the key parts of the counterculture movement was drugs. Unlike the Fifties in the Sixties drugs were not looked down upon but were actually seen as a way to help with opening up to the world. One of the most used drugs at the time was LSD, this psychedelic drug was used to as a way to change the way u perceived your surroundings. Marijuana wasn’t introduced in the Sixties but was virtually everywhere during the decade. Along with all these new ideals came the new music of the time, the rock and roll music of the time summed up the counterculture of time. The lyrics of many different artists such as The Rolling Stones, Neil Young, The Beatles, etc. played an important role in putting this movement “out there”. This is important because I believe that this very big social movement in America impacted Richard Avedon and his works. It would be very hard for his to net get influenced from this counterculture and even he himself show off some of the aspects of the movement on some of his photographs from the