Irving Penn (1917-2009).

Irving Penn, who died yesterday at his Manhattan home at 92, was among the 20th-century's most innovative and influential portrait photographers, lauded primarily for elegance and a new minimalism. As a longtime Vogue cover photographer, the New Jersey native met and depicted celebrities, notably in the arts. But Penn also had a fascination with everyday subjects, producing thematic series on Aboriginal tribespeople, working class people in servitude to the affluent, and public servants including firefighters, police and teachers.

His maxim was: "A good photograph is one that communicates a fact, touches the heart and leaves the viewer a changed person for having seen it."

Irving Penn at a photo shoot with a New Guinea mud man and child.

An April 1950 cover for fashion bible Vogue.
  

 

A late-in-life portrait of French novelist Colette.

"Woman With Roses (Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn in Lafaurie Dress), Paris, 1950. Penn married model Fonssagrives, a favourite subject for decades, who came to be regarded as "the first supermodel."

Marlene Dietrich.

"Ballet Society," New York, 1948. Left to right, Corrado Cagli, Vittorio Rieti, Tanaquil Le Clercq and George Balanchine.

Sophia Loren.

Pablo Piccaso, 1957.

Ingmar Bergman.    

Salvador Dali.

American writer S.J. Perelman.

Truman Capote, New York, 1965.

Miles Davis.  

 
Kate Moss.

Kate Moss.

Nicole Kidman.

Hell's Angels. Penn's photographs of the bike gang made them seem "like Paris fashion models," Alison Nordstrom, a curator at the George Eastman House photography museum in Rochester, N.Y., told the New York Times.

 

Christie's curator Colin Westerbeck with a Kate Moss portrait again on sale at Christie's in London. "Photography is a mass medium available to anyone," Westerbeck said. "A few geniuses, like Irving Penn, redeem it."

Comments

[Blitt]

The Christie's curator in the last photo appears to be trying to catch a glimpse
of Kate's naughty bits; reminds me of a Python skit where Michael Palin was leering desperately at a nude painting from the same extreme angle.

[but anyway]

[David Olive]

Hi Blitt: Thanks for your note! He does have that "dirty old man" look to him. So much for my Python cred, I don't recall that bit. If I was, I dunno, about 5, I'd be thinking a picture did continue on the other side, and I'd be looking too. For now, I'm trying to run down the Tweet in which Megan (sp?) McCain reveals her cup-size, then gets all potty-mouthed with the commenters reaming it out for it. The MSM has all been too discrete to show us. And here it is 2009, almost a decade after the infamous wardrobe malfunction... -David

[temporary internet miami]

oh my god he was such an amazing photographer, is a shame he is dead... I love 2 things this phase> A good photograph is one that communicates a fact, touches the heart and leaves the viewer a changed person for having seen it
and the shot of New Guinea mud man and child.love the photo!!!