PHOTO:Irving Penn- Centennial
Irving Penn was one of the most important and influential photographers of the 20th Century. In a career that spanned almost 70years, Penn worked on professional and art projects across multiple genres. He was a master printer of both black-and-white and color photography and published more than 9 books of his photographs and two of his drawings during his lifetime.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Metropolitan Museum Of Art Archive
“Irving Penn. Centennial” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is a major retrospective of Irving Penn to mark the centennial of his birth. The exhibition follows the 2015 announcement of the landmark promised gift from The Irving Penn Foundation to The Met of more than 150 photographs by Penn, representing every period of the artist’s dynamic career. The gift forms the core of the exhibition, which features 200 photographs ncluding iconic fashion studies of Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn, the artist’s wife, exquisite still-lifes, Quechua children in Cuzco, Peru, portraits of urban laborers, female nudes, tribesmen in New Guinea, and color flower studies. The artist’s portraits from Truman Capote, Pablo Picasso, and Colette to Ingmar Bergman and Issey Miyake are also be featured. Irving Penn was born on 16/6/1917 in Plainfield, N.J. Educated in public schools he attended the Philadelphia Museum School of Art from 1934 to 1938, where Alexey Brodovitch taught him advertising design. While training for a career as an art director, Penn worked the last two summers for Harper’s Bazaar magazine as an office boy and apprentice artist, sketching shoes. At the age of 25, he quit his job and used his small savings to go to Mexico, where he painted a full year before he convinced himself he would never be more than a mediocre painter. Returning to New York, he won an audience with Alexander Liberman, art director of Vogue magazine, who hired Penn as his assistant, specifically to suggest photographic covers for Vogue. The staff photographers didn’t think much of his ideas, but Liberman did and asked Penn to take the pictures himself. Using a borrowed camera, and drawing on his art background and experience, Penn arranged a still life consisting of a big brown leather bag, beige scarf and gloves, lemons, oranges, and a huge topaz. It was published as the Vogue cover for the issue of October 1943, and launched Penn on his photographic career. In his earlier work Penn was fond of using a particular device in his portrait work, replacing it with a fresh one from time to time. Two series of portraits are especially memorable. One was made during Christmas in Cuzco, Peru, the other in studios in London, Paris, and New York. The first, in 1948 high in the Andes, followed a fashion assignment. With a few days to spend between planes, Penn persuaded the local photographer to rent him his studio. Pushing aside the ancient studio camera and picking up his Rollei, Penn made some 200 portraits in color and in black-and-white, in a studio that had a stone floor, a painted background, a small rug, and an upholstered posing chair similar to a piano stool. The other series was the famous “Small Trades” project, a large number of workers posing formally in their work clothes and holding the implements of their trade or occupation. Each was posed against a plain background and lighted from the side, the characteristic lighting that has become identified with most of Penn’s portraiture. In the ‘50s, Penn founded his own studio in New York and continued to develop his fashion, commercial and personal work for the rest of his life.
Info: Curators: Jeff L. Rosenheim, and Maria Morris, Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Met Fifth Avenue, 1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, Duration 24/4-24/7/17, Days & Hours: Mon-Thu & Sun 10:00-17:30, Fri-Sat 10:00-21:00, www.metmuseum.org
