Richard Avedon’s Visual Poetry Arrives on Netflix

Richard Avedon snapped some of the 20th century’s most iconic photographs —powerful ones such as “Sad Marilyn,” a picture of a pensive Norma Jeane Mortenson, and boxer Joe Louis’s fist—and yet the cameraman was often derided as merely a fashion and commercial photographer. Admittedly, he assembled an impressive portfolio while working for glossies Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue as well as a string of prestige labels such as Calvin Klein and Dior. As the new Netflix documentary “Avedon” demonstrates, though, the lensman’s black-and-white photographs epitomized the century’s conglomeration of high and low culture, confirming him as not just a skillful stylist but a prescient virtual poet.