Photographer Irving Penn

Photographer Irving Penn

Irving penn in his younger days

I have been researching this famous photographer while studying my course over the last few months. I have found this photographer to be a past master of his art and a credit to photography, his work is truly outstanding. His work is reconized throughout the world especially for his portraiture and unique quirky style


Shown below are some of his images through the decades

Alfred Hitchcock

Penn worked for the magazine vogue for a number of years, shown below show is some of his work and front covers from the magazine

I am producing a set of images on low key portraits and was particularly influenced by some of the work of this photographer. The image below gave me a source of inspiration

Penn was renown for his creative use of light and shadow. Each of the subjects is posed against a plain background and lighted from the side. This characteristic lighting technique has now become identified with most of Penn's portraiture. Shown above is a prime example. I was intrigued by the subtle lighting and texture of the above shot which gave me a source of inspiration

I have tried to emulate this type of image shown below. This is one of my images which I have used as a comparison which relates to this type of low key photography. I have lighted my model from a side elevation which I think gives the illusion of more depth. I also isolated my subject from it's background by using a large F stop of F4 which creates a shallow depth of field and gives a nice blurred background 

It's not an identical image but it does show how I have emulated this kind of photography and demonstrated how I have simulated this kind of technique

I have given my photograph the title of "the last pilot". My image gives the impression of a pilot returning from an air battle who his reflecting back on the sadness of war and the loss of his colleagues

Some more images from this photographer through the decades

My college classmates and I organised a photography day out trip to London. We knew the Irving Penn photogrphy exhibition was on display at the National Portrait Gallery London so we combined a visit here with other places of interest for photographers that we wanted to visit, these included,The National History Museum, The V and A Museum,The Tate Modern,The south bank and various other locations

Shown here is a screen grab taken fron the NPG Lodon advertising the Penn exhibition

Rudolf Nureyev, New York, 1965

National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. Gift of Irving Penn

© Les Editions Condé Nast S.A.

The link below shows the NPG website which details the exhibition

http://www.npg.org.uk:8080/irvingpenn/exhib.htm

Biography

Irving Penn was born June 16, 1917 in Plainfield, N.J. Educated in public schools, he enrolled at the age of 18 in a four-year course at the Philadelphia Museum School of Art, 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 this time he had no thought of becoming a photographer.


His first job on graduating in 1938 was art director of the Junior League magazine, later he worked in the same capacity for Saks Fifth Avenue department store. 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 1, 1943, and launched Penn on his photographic career.


Penn soon demonstrated his extraordinary capacity for work, versatility, inventiveness, and imagination in a number of fields including editorial illustration, advertising, photojournalism, portraits, still life, travel, and television.


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. At one time he placed two backgrounds to form a corner into which his subject was asked to enter. It was, as Penn explains, a means of closing people in. Some people felt secure in this spot, some felt trapped. Their reaction made them quickly available to the camera." His subjects during this "corner period" included Noel Coward, the Duchess of Windsor, and Spencer Tracy, most of whom complied readily.

In 1958 Irving Penn was named one of "The World’s 10 Greatest Photographers" in an international poll conducted by Popular Photography Magazine. Penn’s statement at the time is a remarkable summation of purpose and idealism: "I am a professional photographer because it is the best way I know to earn the money I require to take care of my wife and children."
In addition to his work for Vogue magazine (the American, British, and French editions) Penn has been represented in many important photographic collections, including those of the Museum of Modem Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Addison Gallery of American Art, and the Baltimore Museum of Art.


Penn varied his equipment, materials, and methods in line with the assignment and his interpretation of it. Thus, he will turn to the Leica or Nikon and a selection of lenses. Or he will go to the 4X5 or 8X10 Deardorff view cameras, or the Rolleiflex or Hasselblad. Penn supervised all the black-and-white processing in his studio, but sent his color work to an outside laboratory.




I have included some more of Penn's recent Photo's taken before he died last year

Irving Penn died aged 92 on October 7, 2009 at his home in Manhattan.