Newsletter readers can now see a special End-of-the-Year Holiday sale on I Photo Central brought to you by all five of the website's photography dealers. These items are available at special sale prices (from 20 to over 60% off the regular list price) for only a limited time, from now until December 20th. Many of the items regular list prices were reduced earlier by over 20%, so the actual net reductions may be well over 40% to 80% in many instances. These are all final prices, so no other discounts apply. Shipping/insurance may also be added.

There are some great deals, so check them out soon at: http://www.iphotocentral.com/sale/sale.php .

If you want to do further sorts on the sale list, you can go to the Search Images page at http://www.iphotocentral.com/search/search.php and put SpecialHolidaySale2 into the key word field. Then you can also use the other search fields, such as price range, country, date range, etc. When you have all your choices made, simply hit the Search button (not the Show All Images button). When you put in the key word, you must have the capital letters in properly and no space between the words or the number "2". Also make sure you do not have any extra space after the key word. This way if you are bargain hunting, you can put in a range from $1 to $500, or if you want to focus on the top end, just put in a range from $1000 (or $5000) to No Limit.

You can also find nearly a hundred new images up on the web site if you have not visited in the last month or so. Just go to http://www.iphotocentral.com/search/search.php and go to the drop down menu on "Time Frame of Posting" and click on "Past Month". You will see all of the great images posted up within the last 30 days, some just this week. Some of these items have even been added to the Holiday Sale.
 

Richard Avedon, who was considered one of the top fashion and portrait photographers of the 20th century, died September 30 of complications of a cerebral hemorrhage in a hospital in San Antonio. He was 81.

Avedon was in Texas on assignment for the New Yorker magazine and had been shooting a portfolio called "Democracy,'' which was an election-oriented project that included coverage of presidential politics.

Avedon was best known for his work as a photographer at Harper's Bazaar (1946-1965) and later at Vogue (1966-1970). But his photographs made their impact felt in the art world. His work was first exhibited at the Smithsonian Institution in 1962. After influential shows at the New York Museum of Modern Art and Marlborough Gallery, a larger more inclusive show of his fashion and portrait work was organized by the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. This exhibition was entitled "Richard Avedon: Photographs 1947-1977" and subsequently traveled to museums in Dallas, Atlanta and Tokyo. In 1994 the Whitney Museum of American Art organized another retrospective exhibition. His nudes were also shown last year at the New York Metropolitan Museum.

Avedon also had a lucrative advertising business shooting for clients like Revlon and Christian Dior.

Avedon was born in New York City on May 15, 1923. He came out of a family oriented towards fashion. His father, Jacob Israel, was the proprietor of Avedon's Fifth Avenue, a Manhattan clothing store. His mother, Anna Avedon, came from a family that owned a dress manufacturing business. The young Avedon avidly perused fashion magazines and often decorated the walls of his room with magazine pages of the fashion photographs he admired.

Much has already been written about Avedon's long-term relationship with the influential art director of Harper's Bazaar Alexey Brodovitch. It was under Brodovitch's tutelage that Avedon blossomed, taking some of his most important images, such as "Dovima With Elephants".
 

Janos Novomezsky, noted daguerreotype collector and dealer, died on September 10th near Budapest, Hungary. Typical of Janos, he had stopped at the side of the road and was trying to help a dog hurt by another car when a drunk driver, who was reportedly speeding, fatally hit and killed Novomezsky.

His son Matthew was in the car that was also hit in the accident, but reportedly suffered no injuries. His Hungarian fiancée and companion for the last two years, Zita Sor, was also hurt in the accident, but suffered only relatively minor injuries.

Janos was born in Budapest on June 25, 1955. He was only 49 years old when he died. Before he left Hungary in 1977, Novomezsky had been a fashion photographer, among other things. He first went to Poland, and than to Sweden. He became a painter in Sweden and had a number of exhibitions there. He told me that he learned English from movies and television programs. He came to the U.S. via Florida, where his grandmother lived. Later he lived in Las Vegas and recently in Rochester, NY and Budapest, Hungary. He had just survived serious spinal surgery, just a few years prior to the accident, but was still concerned about his health.

Daguerreotypes became his passion after he found a box of daguerreotypes in a group of antiques that he had bought. Novomezsky became well known for his enthusiastic support of the daguerreian art form. He was a long time member of the Daguerreian Society, and he spoke to the Annual Meeting of the Society about his collection. He launched the International House of Photography-Budapest (IHPB), which was intended to house his collection, which included many other photographic formats, and sponsor events and symposiums to support photography in Hungary.

It is without question that the daguerreian and broader photographic community will mourn his loss.

Janos's funeral was held in Budapest in the Cemetery of Farkasret. He is buried there next to his mother and father.

Janos was a very close friend, who often came and stayed at my home, and he and his former wife Theresa also gave me refuge in Las Vegas once when I was stranded there because the airport in Philadelphia was snowed in. His tragic death hit me hard. I will miss him, his friendship, and all his "craziness" and passion for photography and life. I lack the proper words for all of this, but his fiancée Zita Sor told me very poignantly: "Janos was half of mine, and I was half of him. And we lost each other. That is what I can say. And he died because of his kindly personality. That is why everybody loved him in his life."
 

Gallery entrepreneur Helen Gee died on October 10th after a long illness. Gee opened the Limelight on Seventh Avenue South and Barrow Street in 1954. It is considered the first important post-war photography gallery, although strictly speaking it was a combination coffee house/gallery. In fact it was the espresso customers, often from the photography community, that kept the gallery solvent—at least for a while. Although this gallery closed in 1961, Gee continued her relationship with photography and the photographers, collectors, curators, fellow dealers and critics who had gathered there.

Limelight was also the title of Gee's 1997 memoir, which put the contemporary market in photography into perspective. At the time she was fortunate to get $25 for images that today often sell for tens of thousands. I remember the late Harry Lunn complaining about the fact that she had failed to mention him in her book, but then he still went out and bought 50 copies to give to his friends.
 

The Photo Review Charity Benefit auction of vintage and contemporary is now available on line at: http://www.photoreview.org/auction.htm .

A fully illustrated catalogue is also available for $12 from the Photo Review, 140 East Richardson Ave., Suite 301, Langhorne, PA 19047-2824. Hundreds of top photographers are represented in the sale. You can order a catalogue from the Photo Review at 1-215-891-0214 or by email at info@photoreview.org .

The regular preview and the auction itself will be held at the Dorrance-Hamilton Building, University of the Arts, Broad and Pine Streets, Philadelphia, PA. The preview will be on November 5th from 11 am to 5 pm and on November 6th from 11 am to 6 pm with the auction following at 7 pm.