It turns out that October is fashion month at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, so there’s probably no better time to check out the extensive photography exhibit, “Avedon Fashion: 1944-2000,” in the MFA’s Foster Gallery. Even a quick walk through the galleries shows how Richard Avedon helped shape some of today’s biggest names in fashion photography.

While sauntering through the black-and-white rooms, you pass from the ladylike 1940s all the way through the inexplicably (and literally) dirty last photos taken in 2000. Because of Avedon’s gift for bringing his models to life you will see not only the changes in high fashion, but also the results of the cultural tectonics that accompanied them. In the 1940s, he managed to catch the return of joie de vivre to postwar Paris through fun scenes and easy movement of fabrics. The beach scenes of the mid-forties are downright adorable, and the slightly later shots (often featuring Dior) capture the glamour of the era while alternating between joyful and melancholy—the mood swings of the postwar world. His 1949 Paris photograph of Dorian Leigh in a coat by Dior on the Avenue Montaigne, sitting in a carriage next to a bouquet of flowers and a tearful-looking puppy, shows gratitude and loss. What might be called hopeful chic contrasts beautifully with the model’s grim contemplation on her cigarette ashes.