Irving penn photographer biography books

Irving penn: small trades book

Gelatin silver print. Irving Penn was one of the twentieth century's great photographers, known for his arresting images and masterful printmaking. Although he was celebrated as one of Vogue magazine's top photographers for more than sixty years, Penn was an intensely private man who avoided the limelight and pursued his work with quiet and relentless dedication.

At a time when photography was primarily understood as a means of communication, he approached it with an artist's eye and expanded the creative potential of the medium, both in his professional and personal work. After some time in New York as Brodovitch's assistant at Harper's Bazaar and various art director jobs, Penn went to Mexico to paint in , traveling through the American South and taking photographs along the way.

He was ultimately disappointed by his paintings and destroyed them before returning to New York late the following year. In , the new art director at Vogue , Alexander Liberman, hired Penn as his associate to prepare layouts and suggest ideas for covers to the magazine's photographers. After the Second World War, as Penn quickly developed a reputation for his striking style in still life and portraiture, Liberman sent him around the world on portrait and fashion assignments.

These were formative experiences, which confirmed Penn's preference for photographing in the controlled environment of a studio, where he could trim away anything that was not essential to his compositions and hone in on his subjects. Separate from these assignments, Penn undertook a major personal project, photographing fleshy nudes at close range in the studio and experimenting with their printing to "break through the slickness of the image.

Unknown photographer, Irving Penn at work in Cuzco , In , Penn was sent to Paris to photograph the haute couture collections for Vogue. He worked in a daylight studio with an old theater curtain as a backdrop, and was graced with an extraordinary model named Lisa Fonssagrives, whom he first encountered in Born in Sweden and trained as a dancer, she was one of the most sought-after fashion models of the time, with a sophisticated understanding of form and posture.

During this time, Penn also worked on a project inspired by a tradition of old prints, photographing the "Small Trades"—butchers, bakers, workmen, and eccentrics who belonged to a disappearing world. On these trips Penn was increasingly free to focus on what truly interested him: making portraits of people in natural light.