As my quest to increase my visual vocabulary continues, I often find myself looking at other areas of visual expression. Though I have always been a big fan of photography, it wasn’t until very recently that I began to feel the need to look at it more closely; so I started with the work of Irving Penn, an American master of photography and thus, visual communication.
Many books and articles found on the internet gives us a good insight about his creative process, and I recently read “Irving Penn, Platinum Prints”, a book written by art curator Sarah Greenough, which gives us important hints about his quiet personality and his intense self-commitment to his own set of standards and a strong determination to enlarge his knowledge. Irving Pen was highly disciplined to his craft.
As it’s been widely registered, Irving Penn was a dedicated trained painter until his mid 20s, he studied advertising art under legendary art director Alexey Brodovitch , soon after, he began working closely with Alexander Liberman at Condé Nast, the publication company behind iconic magazines such as Vogue. After testing his skills, Liberman advised Penn to focus on commercial photography; Penn followed his advice and for over 20 years, (early 40’s-mid 60s) he was Vogue’s lead photographer. At Vogue, Irving Penn photographed multiple products and fashion, as well as the portraits of some of the most celebrated figures of 20th century, including Pablo Picasso, Tenessee Williams and Marcel Ducamp. Penn was always attentive to Liberman’s direction, and as a result he developed a style that made his photographs to always look modern. After twenty years working together, their collaboration became difficult and in 1965 Penn was replaced by Richard Avenon, who many considered to be the only fashion photographer at the time whose reputation was compared to that of Irving Penn.
Though having his work published was his original motivation when he was starting out in the early 40s, by the mid 60s Penn often avoided to see his work on the published pages, because to his view, the printing quality of the time did not match to his expectations. Business executives, ever conscious of printing costs made an influence over printing methods, and is often considered that these changes in printing influenced his desire to see his work being reproduced over a better quality paper, additionally, Penn wanted to start exhibiting his work at galleries, (which at the time favored lithographs and drawings) therefore, Penn began to explore alternative printing methods, such as Platinum printing.(Not a common practice among photographers at the time) As mentioned above, Irving Penn began his practice as a commercial photographer and not from an academic setting; the things he didn’t know relating to dark room printing techniques he would search at the New York Public library, where he spent many hours analyzing old photography journals searching for recipes and techniques. For more than 50 years he worked at his Long Island darkroom on the weekends and often late into the night, perfecting his printing abilities a step further.
When I look at some of the most celebrated photographs by Irving Penn, I cannot help to compare his style to countless photographs I still find on high-end publications, his influence is inevitable, which reflects his discipline and methodical attention to direction and detail; two attributes on which I work harder each day to improve.