“Bob Dylan, the teenager's troubadour came out of the West to wander restlessly through the country, playing and singing his own folk tunes, like ‘Blowin' in the Wind.' More of a words man than a musician, he sets his verbal flashes of insight to simple melodies that hush his audience. Now, five years later, his restless wanderings include brief but profitable stops at Columbia's recording studio which is releasing his latest L.P., Bringing It All Back Home”
—Vogue, April 1965
Richard Avedon’s portrait of Bob Dylan was first published in the April 1965 issue of Vogue, for which the photographer served as guest editor. Under Avedon’s editorship, the issue included his portraits of other iconoclasts such as Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Paul McCartney, and Ringo Starr, all showcasing Avedon’s distinct talent for identifying individuals at the vanguard of cultural change.
The February 1965 session with Dylan on Fifth Avenue was not the first time Avedon had photographed the musician, having worked with him in 1963. In that earlier portrait Dylan poses in faded jeans and plaid shirt, his battered guitar case at his feet, on the city’s industrial waterfront – he is the very picture of the earnest young folksinger making the rounds of the Greenwich Village night spots. In contrast, Avedon’s 1965 portrait shows a very different side of Dylan, who had forgone the trappings of the folk scene in favor of a more sophisticated and urbane look, perfectly at home in the heart of the Upper East Side.
Avedon’s different approaches to photographing the same subject in 1963 and 1965 mirrors Dylan’s musical development during this period. By 1965, he had progressed past the archetype of the guitar-strumming folk troubadour to arrive at a lyrical style that was intensely poetic, and a musical approach that was decidedly heavy. In Avedon’s 1965 handling, the chameleonic Dylan is an urban sophisticate, one who would soon release the epochal album Bringing it All Back Home, featuring a full backing band and the hit single Suburban Homesick Blues.