Irving Penn

American, 1917 - 2009. Irving Penn was a famous photographer well-known for his fashion portrait images for the Vogue magazine. The photographer was also popular for his still-life images. He worked as a freelancer and created advertising works for Clinique and Issey Miyake. The artist mainly equipped 35mm cameras and large formats and captured flowers, street rubble, and animal skulls apart from his celebrity portraits.

Irving Penn was born in Plainfield in New Jersey on June 16, 1917. Penn studied graphic designing at the Abraham Lincoln High School with Leon Friend. He later went on to attend the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Art in Philadelphia under the guidance of photographer Alexey Brodovitch. In 1928, Penn moved to New York, where he worked as an assistant illustrator and painter for Harper's Bazaar under Brodovitch. While working at Harper's Bazaar, Penn started experimenting with black-and-white photographs he captured using his newly brought Rolliflex camera. In 1943, Penn was hired as a publication designer for Vogue magazine by director Alexander Liberman. His experience at Vogue inspired him to pursue fashion photography. In the next few years, the photographer launched himself as a leading fashion photographer. His subjects included famous icons like Georgia O'Keeffe, Pablo Picasso, John Hersey, Marcel Duchamp, Martha Graham, Igor Stravinsky, and W. H. Auden. In 2005, the photographer established the Irving Penn Foundation, a non-profit to expand his legacy.

The artist died at the age of 92 in New York on October 7, 2009. Today, Irving Penn's photography is on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Smithsonian Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C., and the Art Institute of Chicago. Irving Penn's photography for sale often includes black-and-white portraits and floral still lifes. Collectors can find examples of Irving Penn's photography at online auction with leading art galleries.

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