Ron Howard’s “Avedon” turns photos into risk and truth

Ron Howard’s documentary “Avedon,” which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival over the weekend, builds a portrait of Richard Avedon through four defining images—each one tied to a moment of danger, defiance, or intimate revelation.

Ron Howard didn’t realize he’d been living with Richard Avedon’s images his whole life.

There was the iconic portrait of Marilyn Monroe, looking off-camera—deflated.. Charlie Chaplin raising his hands like devil horns.. Brooke Shields in a provocative Calvin Klein ad.. When Howard finally dug into the archives and interviewed people close to the photographer for his new documentary. the recognition hit him more than once.

“It was stunning. ” Howard said. describing what it felt like to go into the vault and see the range of subjects who had sat for Avedon.. Speaking via video call. wearing his trademark cap and surrounded by warm wood paneling. the actor and director of the Oscar-winning film “A Beautiful Mind” drew inspiration from the man at the center of the project.

“He’s braver,” Howard said, comparing himself to Avedon. “He took more leaps, took more risks.”

Avedon’s reach was immense in the second half of the 20th century.. Everyone who mattered in American culture—from Hollywood icons to presidents and revolutionaries—had their portrait taken by him.. Against an often stark white backdrop. Howard said Avedon seemed to peel away the veneer to reveal what he considered their truest selves.

Howard’s documentary, simply titled “Avedon,” premiered at the Cannes Film Festival over the weekend. It draws on archive footage of the photographer, who died in 2004 at the age of 81, alongside revealing interviews with those closest to him.

Howard’s four favorite Avedon photos come with a kind of emotional itinerary: McCarthy-era pressure, Monroe’s resistance to her own image, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s early destiny, and—quietly, all the way through—an artist’s attempt to close the gap with his father.

In 1952. Charlie Chaplin—by then a global celebrity and a political progressive—was feeling the heat from American authorities in the McCarthy era.. Chaplin had lived in the US for decades but had never become a US citizen. and he had become the target of hostile politicians and right-wing press.. Howard said Avedon was nervous for the sitting.

“Avedon was nervous and anxious,” Howard said. “He knew he didn’t have very much time with Charlie Chaplin.”

The portrait session, Howard described, was formal. Avedon was thrilled to be there, Howard said, but Howard also believed Avedon didn’t think he would capture the essence of the man—the aim that guided his work.

In the documentary, Avedon recalled what happened next in the sitting itself: “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 and never to live in the US again. Howard said Avedon was tickled by newspaper speculation that Chaplin had “hid out in my studio… and it turns out this photograph was his last message to the US.”

Howard also returned to the technical precision of the moment—the discipline behind Avedon’s risk-taking.. “Beyond the image’s cheeky two fingers up at authorities. ” Howard said. “there’s also Avedon’s ‘discipline and professionalism.’ 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.”

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

Howard framed the challenge as something deeper than aesthetics: how do you photograph someone who is always ready to be photographed?

“It was a long day,” Howard said. “Lots of different costumes, lots of dancing around and moving.” As the shoot continued, Howard said Avedon noticed Monroe off to the side, lost in thought and wearing a drooped expression. Howard described the shutter click as recognition, not luck.

“This was not an accident,” Howard said. “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 Howard said “it wound up being an absolutely iconic moment.”

In the photo Howard chose, the stark white studio is gone. The world shifts to the early life of Lew Alcindor—before he became one of the top NBA players of all time, now known as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. At that time, he was a high-school kid on the brink of greatness.

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

For Howard, the image also shows a transition in Avedon’s career. As his fame grew—at the peak of his earning power and becoming close to a household name—Avedon began taking more interest in documenting the civil rights movement and later, the Vietnam War. Howard said the choice came with cost.

“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. ” Howard said.. “Projects he was deeply motivated by, but which were not necessarily big earners.”

Howard added, “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.”

The documentary offers that motivation through people who knew Avedon personally. His son, John, said in the film that Avedon’s “moral and political convictions were very real,” recalling his father coming home electrified by a civil rights photography project.

“I had never seen him like that,” John said.

The fourth photograph in Howard’s selection stretches from public history into private life.

Much later in his career, Avedon turned his lens on the working class of the American West—taking his white backdrop to butchers, coal miners and waitresses. Howard said it made sharply visible a group the country had treated as “invisible workforce.”

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

In Avedon’s personal story, the documentary traces a father-and-son distance that deepened and then, gradually, narrowed.. Howard said that when Avedon was young, he was not close to his father.. Later. Avedon told the documentary what he realized: “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 continuing until his father’s death in 1973, Avedon traveled regularly to Sarasota to take his dad’s portrait. Over time, Howard said, the elderly Avedon opened up—relaxed poses and intimate conversations shaped by the camera.

In his later years, Howard said, as Avedon was dying from cancer, he continued to allow his son to capture him at his most frail. Howard described it as “openly sharing himself through this moment,” reflecting Avedon’s willingness to be seen when the stakes were highest.

Avedon said in the documentary. “photographing my father wasn’t just photographing my father.” He said it was “photographing who we really were. without the sense of artifice.” The family even had a tradition from Avedon’s childhood in Manhattan: when they were trying to complete a happy family photo. they sometimes borrowed other people’s pet dogs.. Avedon called it “the sadness of borrowed dogs,” saying, “we were not satisfied with the way we were.”

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

All the pictures Howard chose share a pressure point, even when they’re separated by decades.. Chaplin’s horns. Monroe’s drooped expression. a young Lew Alcindor confronting his future. and Avedon’s portraits of people pushed to the edges—each image carries the same motion: the moment a subject stops performing. and the camera takes a leap.

Howard said he expected the career-focused documentary to be compelling. What surprised him was the man behind the lens.

“It wound up being this kind of object lesson in a creative life,” Howard said.

And he carried that thought into the idea of his own portrait of Avedon. “I hope my portrait of him… is as revealing as many of the great portraits that he was able to give us.”

Ron Howard Avedon Richard Avedon documentary Cannes Film Festival Marilyn Monroe Charlie Chaplin Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Lew Alcindor McCarthy era civil rights photography Vietnam War John Avedon