Irving Penn

Irving Penn – Studies with Alexei Brodowitsch; encouragement from Alexander Liberman

Irving Penn was born in Plainfield, New Jersey on 16 June 1917. He was the eldest son of Jewish clockmaker, and his brother later made a name for himself as director of films such as Bonnie and Clyde or Little Big Man. Irving Penn himself would actually have liked to become a painter, studying drawing, painting, graphics and industrial design at the University of Arts in Philadelphia from 1934 to 1938 under Alexei Brodowitsch, who had Russian roots just like Irving. During this time, Irving Penn had a number of his drawings published in the magazine Harper’s Bazaar, which was edited by his teacher Brodowitsch. Following his studies, he worked for several years as a designer, pursuing photography merely as a hobby. In 1940, he inherited the position of artistic director at the luxury department store chain Saks Fifth Avenue from Alexei Brodowitsch, but gave up this position after just one year to undertake a photo trip through Mexico and the USA. On his return, Alexander Liberman offered him a position as graphic designer with the magazine Vogue. It was also Libermann who encouraged Penn to dedicate himself professionally to photography. 

Photographic still lifes with innovative techniques; war service

With his first photographic works for Vogue, Irving Penn was strongly shaped by the style of the fashion photographer Louise Dahl-Wolfe. In doing so, he did not renounce his roots as a painter and proved his great artistic sense with the composition of his pictures. These were initially true still lifes, composed entirely in the style of the great painters such as Bartolomé Esteban Murill or Antonio González Velásquez. Alongside his artistic side, Irving Penn was also very interested in the handicraft aspect of photography, experimenting with materials and techniques, achieving a softer tonality than was usually found in photographs by using palladium and platinum. He was often unable to find the necessary substances in the shops and so produced them himself, creating a type of object art with his photography. During the Second World War, Penn worked as photographer for the US army in Europe and India documenting individual soldiers, the treatment of the wounded, and everyday life in the military camp.

The photographer who pushed his models into the corner

In 1950, Irving Penn married the Swedish supermodel Lisa Fonssagrives, whom he had met two years prior on a photo shoot. His probably most famous photograph was taken in 1957, the portrait of the Spanish painter Pablo Picasso with Hat and Cloak. The picture involved Penn quickly breaking into the idiosyncratic artist’s villa as Picasso did not want to open the door for him, contrary to agreement. As both men finally faced each other, Penn captured with his camera all the tension that the preceding conflict had caused. His so-called Corner Portraits were thus born, for which Penn literally pushed his subject into the corner, creating photographs of a particular intensity in the resulting confinement. As well as Pablo Picasso, cornered celebrities included Spencer Tracy, Igor Strawinsky, Martha Graham and Georgia O'Keefe. Penn received numerous awards including the renowned Prix Nadar in 1991 for his book En passant.

Irving Penn died in New York City on 7 October 2009.