In a career replete with remarkable images, Richard Avedon’s Dovima with elephants, Evening dress by Dior, Cirque d’Hiver, Paris, stands out as a masterpiece. Made in 1955, on assignment for Harper’s Bazaar, this tour-de-force showcases Avedon’s uniquely inventive approach. Very few photographers working for the fashion magazines in the 1950s had Avedon’s intuitive ability to create an image that was novel and exciting but also served the editorial purpose of showcasing couture. With its brilliant mélange of disparate elements, Dovima with elephants set an entirely new bar for fashion photography that has still not been surpassed.
In August of 1955 Avedon traveled to Paris once again to photograph the couture collections. Fellow photographer Sam Shaw invited him to the set of Trapeze, a movie melodrama set under the big-top starring Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis, which was shooting at the historic Cirque d’Hiver. Avedon was given a tour that included the Cirque’s animal enclosures, and he immediately grasped their potential as the setting for a photo shoot. On the day of the shoot, Avedon masterfully choreographed an ensemble of stylists, assistants, and animal trainers, along with his American model, Dovima, who was sheathed in a sleek gown with flowing sash designed by the young Yves Saint Laurent for the House of Dior. The resulting image, of the elegant model posed against the massive rough forms of the elephants, is both incongruous and exhilarating.
With its appearance the following month in Harper’s Bazaar, illustrating ‘Carmel Snow’s Paris Report,’ Dovima with elephants created a new standard by which fashion photographs would be judged. In a quote that seems to apply directly to this image, Harper’s art director and Avedon’s mentor Alexey Brodovitch succinctly summed up the young photographer’s unique talents: 'The shock-surprise in his photos is the ingredient that has always given his work freshness and excitement. He has an amazing ability to spot the unusual and exciting qualities in each woman he photographs. This, combined with his tremendous imagination, makes his work so exceptional' (U.S. Camera Annual, 1956).
