Irving Penn's Extraordinary Portrait Photographs
75Irving Penn's Wife and Model Lisa Fonssagrives
Irving Penn Portraitist Extraordinaire
At age 90 Irving Penn, the dean of American potrait photographers, continues his work in New York City. As did Richard Avedon, Penn began at Vogue magazine in the 1940s. Penn's portraits span time and subjects unmatched by any other photographer. [Irving Penn died October 7, 2009 at age 92.]
An exhibition of his work entitled "Close Encounters: Irving Penn Portraits of Artists and Writers" organized by Peter Barberie at the Morgan Library in New York City. The exhibit displays portraits of Picasso, Simone de Beauvoir, Woody Allen, Ingmar Bergman, H.L. Mencken, Marcel Duchamps, Jean Cocteau, S.J. Perelman, Carson McCullers, Arthur Miller, Orson Welles, Jasper Johns and other artists and writers. A NYTimes slide show sampling of Penn's "Close Encounters" exhibit is linked below along with Karen Rosenberg's article in the Times.
Irving Penn Photo Collection Auction at Christies NY April 15
- N.Y. Times 1-29-09--67 Penn Photos to be Auctioned April 15
Patricia McCabe died in 2004, and Penn in October. By the time of her death, she had amassed 67 photographs, which Christies will sell in a single-artist sale in New York on April 14. All told, they are expected to fetch $1.3 million to $2 million.
Marcel Duchamp
10-07-08 NYTimes Irving Penn Dead at 92
- Irving Penn Dead at 92
Irving Penn, one of the 20th century's most influential photographers of fashion and the famous, whose signature blend of classical elegance and cool minimalism was recognizable to magazine readers and museum goers worldwide, died at 92.
10-19-09 Adam Gopnik on Irving Penn in the New Yorker
- Irving Penn : The New Yorker
Adam Gopnik remembers Irving Penn. Penn was an instinctive popular classicist, with a magical gift for visual rhythm, for making something insignificant insignificant...look as inevitable as an 18th century still life.
Richard Avedon portrait by Irving Penn
Pablo Picasso
Marlene Dietrich
"The Exalted, Captured But Not Bowed" by Karen Rosenberg in the NYTimes 1-18-08
"Close Encournters Slide Show" courtesy of the NYTimes
Irving Penn "Platinum Prints"
Irving Penn wikibio
Lisa Cant
Blaise Cendrars and His Wife (whose name I was unable to discover)
Jesseye Norman
Sophia Loren
Salvador Dali
Kate Moss
S.J. Perelman
Cafe in Lima
Irving Penn Among the Great Masters
- Master Photographers presented by photography-now.net - The International Photography Index.
Irving Penn, Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Edward Steichen, Diane Arbus, Eugene Atget, Richard Avedon, Manuel Bravo, Walker Evans, Andre Kertesz, Robert Mapplethorpe, Alfred Stieglitz, Josef Sudek
11-19-09 The NY Review of Books--"The Mighty Penn" by Martin Fuller
- The Mighty Penn by Martin Fuller
Penn was assured a high place in the canon of photography well before his death at the age of 92. For those of us who came of age during the 60s, he seemed the Apollonian counterpart of his Dionysian contemporary and competitor, Richard Avedon.
4-11-02 The NY Review of Books "Nudes Without Desire" by Janet Malcolm
- "Nudes Without Desire" by Janet Malcolm
The mystery of the 6-year unconsummated marriage of John Ruskin and Effie Gray, annulled in 1854, after Effie revealed to her father that Ruskin had still not '[made] me his Wife.' He had imagined women were quite different from what he saw I was."
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Irving Penn's Nudes--David Bowman in Salon.com
- Irving Penn\'s nudes - Salon.com
Women of generous weight are being displayed in New York. We have permission to show you the ones most petite. They were photographed during the summer of 1949 by Irving Penn. Gaze upon one subject's lush torso.
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bah, I get jealous because I don't live anywhere near anything more cultural than a cow on a stick downtown with our county's dairy figures listed under it. :(
good hub :)
Great hub, Ralph! I love that photo of Marcel Duchamp.
I started out in black, and it's still my favorite because of the varying degrees on shadows, blacks and whites.
I drift through all this cultural exotica on a magic carpet and then tumble into loun's comment! Nothing like raw reality! But hey lounn! I wouldn't trade my mountain by the bay for anyone! Your cows and my trees + water = earthy culture! lol
Great hub!
Smiles and light
Amazing photos. So glad to get a look.
Iounn - Cow on a stick???
Amazing ! simply amazing!!
can i ask a question? how did you insert marcel's photo in the text portion of the HUB?
I used the little green arrows to make the image smaller. Then I moved it up next to the text. It works pretty automatically.
Thanks for the comments.
ok, the infamous cow-on-a-stick story.
the town I lived in and closest to now that I'm out in the country, has a cow-on-a-stick in the main square downtown. It's a huge metal pole with a giant metal and painted cow stuck on it, just what it sounds like.
there is a new one they put about 5 years ago, a bit smaller than the last one which was HUGE. they took the old one down and it was sitting on a mechanics lot for the longest time, all HUGE and cow-y and it had a 'for sale' sign on it, $1000.
I wanted this cow, all I could think was geeze, what a bargain. I had a dream, friends. I had a dream of buying the giant cow, cutting a windshield out of the chest, dropping in a motor and a horn and of driving this giant cow as a cow-car. then you could be like driving along and if someone was in your way, you could honk the horn "moooo-ve over". wouldn't that be neat?
except, ahem. I didn't have a thousand dollars or money to make it a cow car, even if it were possible and given all that, even if I could have afforded it, it was too big to go under the street lights. :(
another busted dream. story of my life. :|
sorry for disrupting your artistic flow, ralph :(
Take a picture of it and make a cow-on-a-stick Hub!
lol, I should but I don't have a digital cam or a scanner. I suppose I could get a regular pic on a disposable cam and let the drugstore put one on disc for me, though. I'll see what I can do. :)
rural texas culture... a thing of beauty. :D
Here's a cow on a stick. http://www.barbaraarcher.com/artists/truett/img/mt
roflmao, ralph. haha, I can't believe you image googled "cow-on-a-stick". I think my inanity is contagious. you just delighted me beyond measure.
Ok, I'll steal (and credit) this other person's cow-on-a-stick and Hub this thing, but I'm holding you responsible as an accessory to the crime. :D
go look :p
Interesting pics. They seem to bare the soul of the subject and create mystery at the same time.
Wonderful lineup of work. http://hubpages.com/hub/My-walk-to-CVS
Mr. Deeds,
You have a very fine collection of Penn photos. Congratulations! May your collection grow and you continue to share them here.
Many thanks!
Great collection of photos. As a black and white photographer, they give me something to strive for. Really beautiful.
I love the Picasso portrait
Irving Penn dead at 92.
Enjoyed this very much. Muchas Gracias.
De nada, hermano.
It's a wonderful collection; marvelous, the black and whites; the artists, authors, children, stars and mavens.
I love the portraits, how they delve into character with a gesture, like Jean Cocteau. He looks so guarded, sort of pretentious, so dressed. The angles are startling. The coat on the shoulder. The knee made vertical. Amazing, really wonderful, photograph.
Thanks for so many wonderful pictures.
HubCrafter
For more than 30 years Patricia McCabe was the administrative assistant to the photographer Irving Penn. And for more than 30 years, whenever he gave her a present — for Christmas or her birthday or to commemorate a special occasion like the completion of a book project — Penn would choose a print he knew she liked and inscribe it to her on the back, often drawing a heart around or beneath his name.
Ms. McCabe died in 2004, and Penn in October. By the time of her death, she had amassed 67 photographs, which Christie’s will sell in a single-artist sale in New York on April 14. All told, they are expected to fetch $1.3 million to $2 million.
“The collection is a chronology of Penn’s career, beginning with a still life in 1939 and going all the way to a self-portrait he made in 1986,” said Joshua Holdeman, international director of Christie’s photography department. “There are some highly iconic images, like the ‘Cuzco Children,’ and others, like ‘Deli Package,’ that I had never seen before.” NYTimes 1-29-10
I don't know how you think that could be Idi Amin.
But, yes, it is probably Papa Doc the notorious Hatiian dictator.
Thanks. I was guessing. The person in the photo wasn't identified.
Kenny Wordsmith Level 1 Commenter 4 years ago
Loved the slide show. What power!
Had seen only the Cocteau and Picasso before.
Many thanks, Ralph!