Larry Rivers, Steve Andersen and Peter Beard

1973–1988

Shoots most of the Vogue covers

From 1973 Avedon is the lead photographer at Vogue and photographs most of the covers until Anna Wintour becomes editor in chief in late 1988.

1974

Serious heart inflammation

In 1974 serious heart inflammations hinder Avedon’s health; the troubling time prompts him to look at his work from a new perspective.

1974

First works with Brooke Shields

For a Colgate toothpaste ad Avedon photographs the young Brooke Shields; later he photographs her for Versace, for twelve American Vogue covers and for Revlon’s campaign, and shoots the Calvin Klein Jeans campaign in which she is fifteen.

1976

The album “The Family” is published

The album of 69 black-and-white portraits of figures of government and business — George Bush, Henry Kissinger, Ronald Reagan, Donald Rumsfeld, members of the Kennedy and Rockefeller families — is published; The Family was also exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

late 1970s

Buys a house in Montauk

Avedon buys a four-bedroom house on a 7.5-acre estate in Montauk, New York, between the Atlantic Ocean and a nature preserve; he will sell it in 2000 for almost $9 million.

1978

Retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum

The Metropolitan Museum of Art presents a retrospective of Avedon’s work, for which a seven-foot-high print of “Dovima with Elephants” is made; other accounts say the exhibition Avedon: Photographs 1947–1977 was held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1974.