Richard Avedon’s portrait style is mostly black and white photographs with variations of white or grey backgrounds, to up close and out of focus shots. His portraits have a strong sense of character and message, or they are strong simply because of the influence the person in the picture possesses. A good portion of Jonathan Mannion’s black and white portrait photography is identical to Avedon’s white or grey background photography. Same concept and strong character. Looking at other photography by Mannion’s, I noticed he’s adapted a Avedon’s conceptual styling of fashion photography and added his own personal look to it, his are mostly color photographs while Avedon’s were in black and white.
While Avedon photographed many famous high powered people, he also photographed many people who were not either. He used the same style for everyone. This is where the message of his work can be found.