Irving Penn – The King of Black and White

on October 9th, 2009

Irving Penn, who photographed celebrities, indigenous people, workers and cigarette butts, has died at his Manhattan home, aged 92. This is some of his work, my RIP for the man who changed fashion and portrait photography for ever.

Vogue & fashion photography

Penn began as a fashion photographer for Vogue in the 1940s. His approach was always unorthodox – from the spare backgrounds to the severity of his portraiture and the penchant for everyday objects as subjects of his art. His first Vogue cover was a still-life: a brown leather bag, a beige scarf, gloves, oranges and lemons. Not the usual fashion mag cover – and yet one that became a cult image and launched his fulminant career.

He left the magazine in 1944 to join the US military in Italy and then as a photographer in India; he returned to Vogue in 1946 and the 1950s he moved into portraiture, photographing celebrities, plumbers, salesmen and cleaning women in New York City, Paris and London.

Fine art photography

Penn also liked to shoot everyday objects – cigarette butts, decaying fruit and discarded clothing. A 1977 show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art featured pictures of detritus from the streets of Manhattan and photographed against his trademark plain backgrounds. “Photographing a cake can be art,” he said at the 1953 opening of his studio, where he continued to produce commercial and gallery work into the 21st century.

To me, Penn will always be the king of black and white – the man who could make art out of monochromatic simplicity and elegant line, the artist who did not create photography, but captured the soul of everything he shot, including soulless objects. His influence is to be found everywhere – in fashion photography, in illustration, in portraiture and in fashion itself. And while he merged seamlessly with the spirit of his time, he managed to always update his work and make it timeless. RIP monsieur.