The Photography of Irving Penn

Willem de Kooning Francis Bacon Jackson Pollock Richard Avedon Barnett Newman Irving Penn SFMOMA Considers Unusual Expansion Plan Dealer Holly Solomon’s Papers Headed to Smithsonian

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Despite the pervasiveness of paparazzi, blogs and YouTube videos, one of the greatest photographers of the 20th century can stand in a crowd of thousands who’ve admired his work in magazines and museum exhibitions and go unrecognized. During the John Szarkowski opening last spring at MoMA, hardly anyone realized Irving Penn was there. How could that be?

For the most part, only a limited circle — friends, associates, doctors, shopkeepers and such — know what Penn looks like. It’s practically a state secret that he has blue eyes and pencil-thin lips, is bald and slightly built. Although he’s made a few artful self-portraits, including Irving Penn in Cracked Mirror (1986), pictures of him rarely appear in the myriad books, exhibition catalogues and articles featuring his fashion shoots, celebrity photos, unorthodox still lifes, ethnographic studies and astounding nudes. We know he turns 90 on June 16, but much of the rest of his private life is, well, private.

What matters for Irving Penn are the photographs he’s made during his long, prolific career. A still life by Penn first graced a cover of Vogue magazine in October 1943, years before the painters Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Barnett Newman made their mark as Abstract Expressionists. Subsequent art movements, from Minimalism and Pop to Neo-Expressionism and appropriation, not to mention American presidents from FDR and Truman through the two Bushes, have come and gone while Penn has produced one new series or format after another. For most of their professional lives, Penn and Richard Avedon (1923-2004) were the Matisse and Picasso of their photographic generation, and both did much to erase the line between journalism and fine art. The Condé Nast-owned Vogue continues to publish still lifes by Penn in every issue.

Penn’s latest body of work is on view at New York’s Pace/MacGill Gallery through February 17. Simply called "In Flower," it offers radiant 18-by-24-inch digital prints of Iceland poppies, anemones, Gerbera daisies, several varieties of roses and a Persian violet. Vibrant yellows, reds, greens and oranges predominate, with a sprinkling of majestic purples and effulgent whites. Several plants appear as tall, thin and erect as the haute-couture models the photographer shot in 1950, when Vogue sent him to Paris to cover the collections for the first time. Others are bent by age. Quite a few are withered, ravaged by time.

Instead of focusing on their surfaces, Penn often delves to the flowers’ cores, where pollination occurs. As his primary dealer, Peter MacGill, points out, "Whatever state of life or death they’re in, Mr. Penn finds beauty." The earliest images are from the late 1960s, reprinted in 2006; the most recent are prints of pictures taken by the artist as octogenarian.

Initially, Penn wanted to be a painter, not a photographer. A few years out of the Philadelphia Museum School of Art and after two stints as an art director, he went to Mexico for a year to try his hand at painting. Realizing he wasn’t very good, Penn returned to New York and wangled a position as an assistant to Vogue creative director Alexander Lieberman. The still life Penn shot for his first Vogue cover was followed by many more taken for the magazine and for his art.

In addition to fashion models — including, most notably, Lisa Fonssagrives, the classic beauty he married — Penn photographed celebrities for the magazine, and these shots also reflect his unerring eye for detail. Famous artists, actors and playwrights come alive as individuals, with wrinkles, furrowed brows and anguished expressions.

At the age when many artists retire, Penn still has all sorts of surprises up his sleeve. In 2002 he presented two series of unusual nudes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and at the Whitney Museum of American Art. The striking prints at the Met belonged to a group shot during 1949-50 and not exhibited until 1980. At their first showing, they made few waves; four years ago, though, the reaction was seismic: Robust is the polite word to describe the headless torsos printed in an unusual, experimental process. As for the Whitney works, which date from 1999, under Penn’s direction, the hefty dancer Alexandra Beller poses seductively and moves with assurance; she’s as alluring and mysterious as any reed-thin fashion plate.