Lartigue, Avedon, and Wes Anderson

It’s been duly noted that Wes Anderson took inspiration from Jaques Henri Lartigue.
For one, the shot of Max Fischer (played by Jason Schwartzman) as founder of the Yankee Racers is clearly homage to Lartigue’s image of his brother on a “bobsled with wheels”. Furthermore, his brother’s name is Zissou and any Anderson fan will tell you that Zissou is the name of Bill Murray’s character in The Life Aquatic.

As I was exploring the late Richard Avedon’s portfolio, I came across this image of a young rattlesnake skinner:

It recalled the fleeting image of Eli Cash (as played by Owen Wilson) on the cover of a NYT-looking Sunday Magazine in The Royal Tenenbaums…



I perused the internet to see if this has been documented, and of course it has been mentioned (although not as much as the Lartigue/Anderson homages.) Turns out, the mother of Luke and Owen Wilson, Laura Wilson, worked closely with Avedon, particularly in his documenting the American West. What’s more, Richard Avedon is the man behind the cast photo for the Royal Tenenbaums, according to the Criterion Collection page.
The best thing about great filmmakers is the ability of their work to affect you long after you are exposed to it. Woody Allen’s cultural references had turned me on to Swedish playwright August Strindberg, Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, American comics the Marx Brothers, and countless other creative talents. Wes Anderson’s work seems to have the same effect on me, although his references also introduced me to new things in the world of typography and classic fashion in addition to film, music, and literature.