Another Giant Is Gone

bdcolen

Irving Penn, Fashion Photographer, Is Dead at 92


Horst/Staley-Wise Gallery

Flyinggina

Yes, I read it in the paper this morning. Fashion photography has lost a lot of its glamor in recent years. We need more like Penn.

Virginia

bdcolen

Flyinggina wrote:

Yes, I read it in the paper this morning. Fashion photography has lost a lot of its glamor in recent years. We need more like Penn.

Virginia

Penn, like Avedon, transended fashion photography. His photography was just incredible photography.

rutt

I've always loved his work. You can see what a fantastic photographer he was by looking what he did with flowers, a subject that nearly every photographer has to play with. Penn's images show how much a great eye can add:



Just google him and you'll be knocked out by his images.

JimW

Eliminate. This is just one major aspect of Penn’s work.

He wanted “his” light. Sometimes it was studio strobes, sometimes the strobes fed into a light tent that he had devised. Sometimes he lit his backgrounds from behind the background and blocked some of the light with gobos, just to get a different look. Often he used natural light. And he wanted “his” space. He concocted a special set of walls and corners in his studio into which he placed his subjects. But always, he would look and eliminate. Penn was famous for spending some time looking through the viewfinder. He eliminated clothes and models and background detritus and kept at it until he settled on his graphic, clean, unique look. His light, his space, his message.

Once while researching Ralph Gibson’s work for a presentation I was to give, I got access to Gibson’s contact sheets. It was interesting to see how he started shooting, then moved in closer, eliminating unnecessary detail, then moved in further, and finally over the course of six or so frames, he had eliminated everything except the core of what he wanted to say. Then he went into the darkroom and eliminated even more detail in making his prints.

So here are two artists who are hell-bent on eliminating the unnecessary detail in their images.

Irving Penn operated at such a high level of quality for such a long time that his work seems to be taken for granted. It is well worth the time to investigate this great artist. There is so much we can learn from him.

Jim