Irvin Penn

Irving Penn (1917 - 2009) Irving Penn was born in New Jersey United States Plainfield. Arthur Penn was the brother of Irvin Penn, Arthur was also a motion picture director. Penn was interested in become a painter, but he had a change of course and decided to take a job designing photographic covers, this was at the age of 26. This was for a well known magazine called Vogue. Penn started to have ideas of his own for different cover designs, with doing this he started to establish himself as a Photographer of Fashion. Penn was married in 1950 this was to Lisa Fonssagrives who was a model. Most of his best work was of his wife, Penn wanted to achieve his work to be elegant and full of clarity, this he done without the use of backdrops and props. Penn photographed a large number of celebrities, whom he liked to ask each person to sit for some time, this was usually quite a few hours at a time. He did this to try and reveal his or her personality to the camera. When photographing portraits he liked to use a bare backdrop with the subject, he also liked to do this in natural Northern light. Penn liked to produce a Combination of simplicity and sophistication with his images. Penn done a series of portraits in 1950 to 1951 this was called 'small trades' this was of all types of labourers, all from different cities, New York, Paris, London. He got the labourers to pose with their tools and in their work clothes, this eventually started to extend to many other Country's. Later Penn done a series of platinum prints, theses prints were of cigarette butts and nudes who were female. With theses photographs he produced the same serenity and tones that were in his portrait photography.

Information can be found at;-  http://www.britannica.com/biography/Irving-Penn
                                                                                                                                                                                                             

Avril Dean

Cigerette No. 17