Last month, while Richard Avedon was playing down his fashion photographer profile by showing Manhattan numerous images he has produced in other genres, another New Yorker, Arthur Elgort, was making personal appearances at the city's book stores and the Staley-Wise gallery to launch Models Manual, which focuses on his 22 years of fashion for Condé Nast and other magazines.

Despite his immense success-and a retrospective now on view at the Whitney Museum-Richard Avedon still worries that people don't take him seriously as an artist. "When will they ever stop judging me as a man," he asks, "and look at the work?"