Profession: photographer

Avedon’s distinctive style made him one of the great photographic portraitists. He and Baldwin were school-mates and lasting close friends, collaborating over a 30-year period. As a ten-year-old, Avedon photographed Rachmaninoff, living in the same building as his grandparents. Among others he portrayed, he read Kipling to Borges, played lawn-darts with de Kooning, caught Williams and Pound at their last meeting, and Chaplin on his final day in America. Arbus, Capote and Tharp were close friends. Astaire gave him a pair of shoes that didn’t fit (and played a character based on Avedon). Frank found him pretentious and pushy.

Doisneau’s sympathetic yet sharp-eyed photography helped show life as it was: a true poet. As a young man, he met the aged Atget. Sent to photograph Cendrars, Doisneau and he became close accomplices; similarly with Jacques Prévert. Kertesz was one of Doisneau’s heroes (they were photographed together); Penn, he said, was very kind to him. He met Cartier-Bresson at an agency both worked for; despite his admiration for and close friendship with Cartier-Bresson, Seymour and Capa, he decided not to join Magnum. He photographed Corbusier over several years, Johns and Beckett together, as well as his friend Mac Orlan.

Curtis met Grinnell by chance while out photographing in the wilderness, Grinnell and colleagues being lost. Curtis guided them back, Grinnell saw his work, and as a result invited him to join an expedition to record Blackfeet culture. Muir and Ridgway were fellow-members of Harriman’s 1899 Alaska expedition, Curtis being a key member (the meeting with Grinnell also led to this appointment). Cunningham worked in Curtis’s studio, though only met him twice, and described him as a determined egoist. Flaherty called on him in New York, aware of shared interests, and found him supportive, sympathetic and father-like.

Cartier-Bresson had been a fellow-student of painting. Éluard introduced her to Picasso, who became her lover for 8 years (it was Picasso and Éluard who sent her to be treated by Lacan). Hugnet and Crevel were among the surrealists she already knew, as was Man Ray, who (it seems) had unsuccessfully pursued her. Brassaï shared a darkroom with her, Éluard wrote a poem for her, and Breton made a surrealist ‘song-object’ for her. She gravitated into the circle around her friend Bataille, and collaborated with Picasso on a series of photo-etchings (she was unique among his lovers as an artist in her own right).