Observations is Richard Avedon's first book and is one of the key photographic books of the twentieth century. Vince Aletti refers to it as being 'the culmination of a creative collaboration between Richard Avedon and Alexey Brodovitch that began in 1945, when the imperial art director hired the 22-year-old photographer, fresh out of Brodovitch's famously demanding Design Laboratory seminars at the New School for Social Research, as the youngest member of his team at Harper's Bazaar.'
Brodovitch resigned from Harper's Bazaar in 1958. In many ways, Observations sums up the ideas he introduced to editorial design during his tenure as that magazine's art director.

First edition; folio (360 × 267 mm, 14¼ x 10½ in); black-and-white photographs printed in gravure, design by Alexey Brodovitch; printed endpapers, printed paper-covered boards, white, text in grey, publisher's acetate overlay, publisher's paper-covered board slipcase, white, text printed in red, blue and grey, light wear to edges, short splits at corners, near-fine in the slightly torn and creased original acetate overlay with a very good slipcase; 151, [1]pp.

Regards sur un siècle de photographie à travers Le Livre 122; The Book of 101 Books: Seminal Photographic Books of the Twentieth Century pp148–9; 802 photo books from the M + M Auer collection p386.