Richard Avedon

Richard Avedon poses in front of his self-portraits, part of the exhibit "Richard Avedon: Portraits," at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Oct. 9, 2002, in New York. Dubbed "the world's most famous photographer" in The New York Times, Avedon died Oct. 1, 2004, at the age of 81.

Avedon talks to actress Audrey Hepburn during a photo session in Los Angeles, April 24, 1956. Avedon dropped out of high school in 1940 to run errands for a photo company, and two years later received a Rolleiflex camera from his father upon joining the U.S. Merchant Marine. When he returned to New York, he became a photographer for the tony Bonwit Teller department stores, then moved to Harper's Bazaar.

Avedon shot this 1961 photo of Caroline Kennedy, 3, kissing her baby brother, John F. Kennedy Jr., in Palm Beach, Fla.

Another of Avedon's images of the first family's new addition, with big sister Caroline.

Actor Warren Beatty, left, and actress Diane Keaton attend a gala party at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to celebrate the opening of an Avedon retrospective, Sept. 13, 1978. As a Publishers Weekly review once noted, Avedon helped create the cachet of celebrity - if he took someone's picture, they must be famous.

Avedon is photographed in 1979. Avedon said his view of the world was literally affected by his nearsightedness. "I began trying to create an out-of-focus world - a heightened reality better than real, that suggests, rather than tells you," he once told The New Yorker in an interview.

Avedon, left, shakes hands with Italian fashion designer Gianni Versace as Versace's sister and business associate Donatella stands between them, November 1992 in New York. Avedon's sensuous fashion work helped create the era of supermodels like Naomi Campbell and Cindy Crawford.

Avedon addresses the audience after receiving the Alfred Eisenstaedt Award for Magazine Photography in the "LIFE Legend Award" category, April 5, 2000, in New York. During his career, Avedon worked for such photograph-driven publications as Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, and served as The New Yorker magazine's first staff photographer.

Avedon poses in front of a photograph of actor Bert Lahr in Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot," part of a the exhibit "Richard Avedon: Portraits," at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Oct. 8, 2002, in New York. The show was the city's first major exhibit of Avedon's portrait photographs in almost 30 years.

Avedon, left, speaks to a woman who came to see the retrospective exhibit of his portraits at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Oct. 8, 2002, in New York.

Avedon, right, poses with American painter Chuck Close at the Americans for the Arts 8th Annual National Arts Awards Gala, held in the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, Nov. 11, 2003 in New York.

Avedon, left, American sculptor Richard Serra, center, and American artist Jeff Koons pose at the Americans for the Arts 8th Annual National Arts Awards Gala.

Avedon frames the face of director Sofia Coppola at the Americans for the Arts 8th Annual National Arts Awards Gala.