A man looks at the August, 1955 photograph of the model Dovima with elephants taken by famed portrait photographer Richard Avedon at the Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco, California, October 1, 2004. Richard Avedon, one of the most influential portrait and fashion photographers of the 20th century, died on Friday at age 81 in Texas, where he had been photographing an essay on democracy for the New Yorker magazine.