Ron Howard’s new film on famed photographer Richard Avedon, explained in four remarkable shots

By Sheena McKenzie, CNN

(CNN) — Like many of us, director Ron Howard had come across Richard Avedon’s photos all his life, without realizing it. There’s the iconic portrait of Marilyn Monroe looking off-camera, deflated. Charlie Chaplin mimicking devil horns. Brooke Shields in a provocative Calvin Klein ad. As Howard dug through the archives and interviewed subjects for his new documentary on the renowned American photographer, the bolt of recognition hit him more than once.

“It was stunning,” Howard said of going into the vault and seeing the range of subjects who had sat for him. Speaking via video call, trademark cap on, warm wood paneling all around, the actor and director of the Oscar-winning film, “A Beautiful Mind,” took inspiration from Avedon: “He’s braver,” he said, comparing himself. “He took more leaps, took more risks.”

In the second half of the 20th century, everyone who was anyone in American culture – from Hollywood icons to presidents and revolutionaries – had their portrait taken by Avedon. Against an often stark white backdrop, he expertly peeled away the veneer to reveal their truest selves.

Howard’s documentary — simply titled, “Avedon” — which premiered at Cannes Film Festival over the weekend, draws on both archive footage of the photographer (who died in 2004, aged 81), and revealing interviews with those closest to him. His son, John, recalls an intensively driven father who, though loving, was often away from home. While top art dealer Larry Gagosian remembers with a chuckle going to Avedon’s home for brunch and being served hardboiled eggs and champagne. “I thought it was super elegant,” he said.

We asked Howard to pick his four favorite Avedon photos. “That’s a challenge,” he said, of narrowing it down from many thousands of images. A challenge the director was game for.

Below are Howard’s top Avedon photos.

Charlie Chaplin’s devilish mischief

The year is 1952 and Charlie Chaplin, a global celebrity and political progressive, is feeling the heat from American authorities in the McCarthy era. The English film icon had by that time lived in the US for decades, though had never become a US citizen, and was now the target of hostile politicians and right-wing press.

Chaplin agrees to a portrait with Avedon. “Avedon was nervous and anxious,” said Howard. “He knew he didn’t have very much time with Charlie Chaplin.” They went through the sitting, it was rather formal. And while Avedon was “thrilled to have this opportunity,” said Howard, “I don’t think he felt like he was getting the essence of the man, which was always Avedon’s aim.”

In the documentary, Avedon in archive footage recalled what happened next: “When I was finished, (Chaplin) said, ‘now can I do one for you?’ And he put his head down and he came up frowning furiously with these horns. And then he said, ‘no, no, I want to do it again.’ And he came up smiling.”

The next day, Chaplin and his family set sail for London, never to live in the US again. Avedon was evidently tickled by newspaper speculation Chaplin had “hid out in my studio… and it turns out this photograph was his last message to the US.”

Beyond the image’s cheeky two fingers up at authorities, there’s also Avedon’s “discipline and professionalism,” said Howard. “He only had one crack at this. And look, it’s sharp, his eyes are perfect. Of course, Chaplin probably knew to stay right on his mark also. But those two nailed it in this moment.”

Marilyn Monroe’s mask slips

In 1957 Marilyn Monroe was at a crossroads. The previous year she had married the playwright Arthur Miller, and was increasingly pushing against her blonde bombshell image. She hired Avedon to photograph her for a new film, “The Prince and the Showgirl.”

In some ways, Monroe was the ultimate challenge to Avedon’s methodology of capturing the inner life of his subjects, the moment the mask slips. How do you photograph someone who is always ready to be photographed?

It was “a long day,” said Howard. “Lots of different costumes, lots of dancing around and moving.” As the shoot wore on, Avedon spotted Monroe off to the side, lost in thought and wearing a drooped expression. He clicked the shutter.

“This was not an accident,” said Howard. “This is not a moment caught. It’s a moment that he observed. And this is the director in him, the storyteller in him. He went to Marilyn, the brilliant actress, and said ‘I want that moment in front of the paper.’” Monroe agreed and “it wound up being an absolutely iconic moment.”

Lew Alcindor on home turf

In this image, the stark white studio is gone. We’re on Lew Alcindor’s turf now. Before he was one of the top NBA players of all time – now by the name of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar – he was a high-school kid on the brink of greatness.

Looking at the photo, “you have a feeling about somebody facing their destiny,” said Howard.

For Howard, the image also reflects a transition in Avedon’s career, as he took more of an interest in documenting the civil rights movement and later, the Vietnam War. “At the peak of his earning power, as he’s really becoming damn-near a household name, and certainly a superstar in the magazine world, the fashion world, and the world of photography, he chooses these projects,” said the director.

Projects he was deeply motivated by, but which were not necessarily big earners. “Every hour that he’s shooting young Lew Alcindor out here, is an hour where he’s not shooting Marilyn Monroe or a magazine cover,” said Howard.

Avedon’s “moral and political convictions were very real,” said the photographer’s son John, who in the documentary remembered his father coming home electrified by a civil rights photography project. “I had never seen him like that.”

Much later in his career, Avedon turned his lens on the working class of the American West, this time taking his white backdrop to the butchers, coal miners and waitresses – making the country’s so-called invisible workforce, sharply visible.

“He courageously defined himself as this person who was not going to stay in one lane,” said Howard. And at times there were “scathing reviews that hurt him… but he carried on.”

A last portrait of a father

In his youth, Avedon was not close to his father. Later, as he recounts in the documentary, “I realized there was a 76-year-old man living in Florida that I didn’t know. And I had to, for the sake of my son and myself, find out who this parent was.”

Beginning in the late 1960s and up until his father’s death in 1973, Avedon began regularly traveling to Sarasota to take his dad’s portrait.

As time went on, the elderly Avedon opened up to his son’s camera – both in his relaxed poses and the intimate conversations they sparked. In his later years, as he was dying from cancer, he continued to allow his son to capture him at his most frail, “openly sharing himself through this moment,” said Howard.

For Avedon, “photographing my father wasn’t just photographing my father,” he said in the documentary. “It was photographing who we really were, without the sense of artifice.” This, afterall, was a family who when Avedon was a child growing up in Manhattan, would sometimes borrow other people’s pet dogs to complete the happy family photo. “The sadness of borrowed dogs,” he lamented, adding, “we were not satisfied with the way we were.”

Truly knowing his father in his last years, “is one of the happiest things in my life,” Avedon said.

Howard knew a documentary about Avedon’s career was going to be compelling. What took him by surprise was how inspiring he found the man behind the camera. As he delved into the stories behind the images, “it wound up being this kind of object lesson in a creative life.”

“I hope my portrait of him… is as revealing as many of the great portraits that he was able to give us.”

Video by Bryce Urbany.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.