“A good photograph is one that communicates a fact, touches the heart, leaves the viewer a changed person for having seen it. It is, in a word, effective”
The influential American fashion photographer Irving Penn died at home in New York on Wednesday at the age of 92. Penn worked for many years for Vogue magazine, and had his first cover in 1943. He was known for his elegant portraits and stark backgrounds which often involved squeezing his subject into the corner of a room.
Photo c. Irving Penn
Among those he photographed were Marlene Dietrich, WH Auden, Georgia O’Keefe, Igor Stravinsky, Marcel Duchamp, Truman Capote (left), Pablo Picasso, Miles Davis and Kate Moss.
Kate Moss. by Irving Penn
He also took off around the world to photograph native warriors in New Guinea, beautifully costumed women in Cameroon and hippies and Hells Angels in California.
Hippie Family, San Francisco, 1967 by Irving Penn
Penn was also 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.
In February last year, the J Paul Getty Museum acquired Penn’s most extensive body of work, The Small Trades, a set of 252 full-length portraits of tradespeople in natural lighting taken in 1950 and 1951. They went on exhibition in September.
In 1958 Irving Penn was named one of “The World’s ten Greatest Photographers” in an international poll conducted by Popular Photography Magazine. He retained that popularity until his death.
He was married in 1950 to the Swedish fashion model Lisa Fonssagrives with whom he had two children. She died in 1992.
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