Irving Penn

Infobox Person
name = Irving Penn

---

birth_date = birth date and age|1917|6|16
spouse = Lisa Fonssagrives (1950-1992)
children = Tom Penn

Irving Penn (born 16 June 1917) is an American photographer known for his portraiture and fashion photography.

Biography

Early career

Irving Penn studied under Alexey Brodovitch at the Philadelphia Museum School from which he graduated 1938. Penn's drawings were published by Harper's Bazaar and he also painted. As his career in photography blossomed, he became known for post World War II feminine chic and glamour photography.

Penn has worked for many years doing fashion photography for Vogue magazine. He was among the first photographers to pose subjects against a simple grey or white backdrop and used this simplicity more effectively than other photographers. Expanding his austere studio surroundings, Penn constructed a set of upright angled backdrops, to form a stark, acute corner. Posing his subjects within this tight, unorthodox space, Penn brought an unprecedented sense of drama to his portraits, driving the viewer's focus onto the person and their expression. In many photos, the subjects appeared wedged into the corner. Subjects photographed with this technique included Martha Graham, Marcel Duchamp, Georgia O'Keeffe, W. H. Auden, Igor Stravinsky and Marlene Dietrich.

While a master of the studio flash, most of Penn's portraits are lighted with window light. For travelling to New Guinea and other locations to photograph indigenous people, Penn created a portable studio with a skylight deployed facing north with impressive results. These pictures had the same feel as his portraits of celebrities; fully adorned, naturally lighted, yet placed before the neutral backdrop, his tribal subjects appear as strangely defined models for a 19-century ethnographic investigation.

In 1950, Penn married his favorite model, Lisa Fonssagrives and he founded his studio in 1953. They have one son together, who is named Tom.

Penn's style

Clarity, composition, careful arrangement of objects or people, form, and the use of light characterize Penn's work. Penn also photographs still life objects and found objects in unusual arrangements with great detail and clarity.

While his prints are always clean and clear, Penn's subjects vary widely. Many times his photographs are so ahead of their time that they only came to be appreciated as important works in the modernist canon years after their creation. For example, a series of posed nudes whose physical shapes range from thin to plump were shot in 1949-1950, but were not exhibited until 1980.

His still life compositions are skillfully arranged assemblages of food or objects; at once spare and highly organized, the objects are raised to a graphic perfection, articulating the abstract interplay of line and volume.

Legacy

He has published numerous books including the recent, "A Notebook at Random" which offers a generous selection of photographs, paintings, and documents of his working methods. Penn's wife, Lisa Fonssagrives, died in 1992.

Exhibitions

In 2002, 53 photos were shown in a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In many of this prints, the subjects appear sculptural and like a primitive Venus. The graphic detail and clarity of his images would not have been possible to put on display in earlier years.

In July 2005, Penn's work was shown at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC in an exhibit titled "Irving Penn: Platinum Prints."

Between January and April 2008, 67 portraits are shown at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City in an exhibit titled "Close Encounters".

In September 2009, the J. Paul Getty Museum plans to exhibit the most extensive collection of Irving Penn's works. "The Small Trades" is a collection of 252 full-length portraits by Penn from 1950 to 1951. Penn's subjects were from New York, Paris, and London. [citation | title= Getty Acquires Irving Penn's Most Extensive Work | publisher=ARTINFO | year=2008 | date= February 7, 2008 | url= http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/26765/getty-acquires-irving-penns-most-extensive-work/| accessdate=2008-04-21 ]

Quotes

:"Photographing a cake can be art" —Irving PennFact|date=January 2008

Books by Penn

*(2004) "A notebook at Random" (ISBN 0-8212-6192-4)
*(2004) "Photographs of Dahomey" (ISBN 3-7757-1449-9)
*(2001) "Still Life" (ISBN 0-8212-2702-5)
*(1999) "Drawings" (ISBN 0-9665480-0-0)
*(1999) "The Astronomers Plan a Voyage to Earth" (ISBN 0-9665480-1-9)
*(1999) "Irving Penn Regards The Work of Issey Miyake" (ISBN 0-224-05966-1)

Books about Penn

*(2005) "Irving Penn: Platinum Prints". Sarah Greenough, David Summers (ISBN 0-300-10906-7)
*(2002) "Earthly Bodies: Irving Penn's Nudes, 1949-50". by Irving Penn, Maria Morris Hambourg, Metropolitan Museum of Art (ISBN 0-8212-2787-4)
*(1997) "Irving Penn : A Career in Photography". Colin Westerbeck (ISBN 0-8212-2459-X)

References

External links

* [http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2005/penn/penn_ss1.shtm Irving Penn: Platinum Prints at the National Gallery of Art]
* [http://www.irvingpenn.com Official site]
* [http://artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=1071 Art News Online article on a Penn photo]
* [http://masters-of-photography.com/P/penn/penn_society_full.html Irving Penn gallery]
* [http://robertgiraud.blog.lemonde.fr/2007/02/25/bob-giraud-lhomme-de-penn/ Irving Penn in Paris in the 50'(French)]
* [http://br.geocities.com/artxxcentury/irving_penn.htm Irving Penn Works]