Iconic photographer Irving Penn’s 70-year career is showcased at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
-PJ Gach
   The Twelve Most Photographed Models, 1947- Irving Penn--photo credit PJ Gach

You’ve probably viewed Irving Penn’s work perusing vintage fashion photos; after all he shot for Vogue for sixty years. You might have enjoyed his portraits of Audrey Hepburn, Truman Capote, and Tom Wolfe. All of this—his fashion photography, his portraiture and more have been collected and curated for this new exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
   Images courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art  

Irving Penn: Centennial runs from April 24 to October 30, 2017. The multi-room show contains pen and ink sketches, fashion photographs, selections from his still life series, groupings of nudes, commercial work, and photographs of indigenous peoples.

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In a life filled with color, most Penn’s work is in black and white. While the modern viewer is used to the explosion of hues in a photo, these monochromatic works burst with details and shadings. They capture the imagination as well as the eye.
    Images courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art  

Portraits range from authors like Collette, S.J. Perelman, Carson McCullers and Tom Wolfe, to artists like Salvador Dali, fashion designers like Charles James and actresses like Audrey Hepburn and Marlene Dietrich.

Affixed to the walls in each room is a quote from Penn. One might read, “To me, personally, photography is a way to overcome mortality.” In another, this quote is penciled in above images, “Photography is just the present state of man’s visual history.”

Penn utilized the same backdrop for many of his photographs. It was an old theater curtain he found in Paris. It had been painted with soft diffused clouds. He carted this curtain wherever he went, using it to shoot almost all his work.
    Photo credit PJ Gach 

Included in the exhibit is his camera, a rare video of him working in a tent in Morocco. There are also issues of Vogue where his work appeared that are juxtaposed with larger prints of those same subjects on the walls of the exhibit.

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After the exhibit leaves New York City, it will then travel to Paris (at the Grand Palais, September 2017–January 2018), then Berlin and São Paulo.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is 1000 Fifth Avenue. For more information on the Met, the Irving Penn exhibit, directions and hours, please visit their site.