In Memory of the Late Mr & Mrs Comfort

"You can only get beyond the surface by working with the surface. I have great faith in surfaces. A good one is full of clues." Richard Avedon, 1970

In Memory of the Late Mr and Mrs Comfort is a fable photographed and created for The New Yorker by Richard Avedon, on 6th November 1995, in collaboration with Doon Arbus and featuring model Nadja Auermann.

    

Mrs Comfort is a beautiful model and a real actress. Mr Comfort is a skeleton who acts in each photograph. They tell a story using the best known fashion houses ' outfits. Richard Avedon was an engaged photographer. He wanted to deny a consuming society he was benefitting from. He wanted to say goodbye to the fashion and its seductive environment. "We are all mortals and even if we are famous and actors we are getting skeletons...Fashion is an illusion, a magnificent means to fight the time going bye. I was a complice of that until this serial.

Book  Woman in the Mirror, Richard Avedon - Essay by Anne Hollander                                               Who is reflected in the mirror: the seer, the seen or the unseen? Norma Stevens