Irving Penn

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Lore & Background

Irving Penn was born to a Russian Jewish family on June 16, 1917, in Plainfield, New Jersey, to Harry Penn and Sonia Greenberg. His younger brother, Arthur Penn, born in 1922, became a film director and producer. Penn attended Abraham Lincoln High School where he studied graphic design with Leon Friend. He earned a diploma in 1938 from the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Art, where he studied drawing, painting, graphics, and industrial arts under Alexey Brodovitch. While still a student, Penn worked under Brodovitch at Harper's Bazaar, which published several of Penn's drawings. Penn worked as a freelance designer for three years, taking his first amateur photographs before assuming Brodovitch's position as art director at Saks Fifth Avenue in 1940. He remained there for a year before leaving to spend a year painting and taking photographs in Mexico and across the US. When Penn returned to New York, Alexander Liberman offered him a position as an associate in Vogue magazine's Art Department. Penn worked on layout before Liberman asked him to try photography. His first photographic cover for Vogue appeared in October 1943. During World War II, he volunteered with the American Field Service, driving an ambulance in support of the British Eighth Army in Italy, and later photographed soldiers, medical operations, and camp life for the AFS while bivouacked in India. He sailed back to New York in November 1945. Penn continued to work at Vogue throughout his career, photographing covers, portraits, still lifes, fashion, and photographic essays. In the 1950s, he founded his own studio in New York and began making advertising photographs. His clients grew to include General Foods, De Beers, Issey Miyake, and Clinique. Penn met his first wife, Nonny Gardner from England, while both were students at the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Art; they married in 1940 and divorced in 1943. Penn met Swedish fashion model Lisa Fonssagrives at a photo shoot in 1947. In 1950, the two married at Chelsea Register Office, and two years later Lisa gave birth to their son, Tom Penn, who became a metal designer. Lisa Fonssagrives died in 1992. Penn died aged 92 on October 7, 2009 at his home in Manhattan.

Reader's Guide

Irving Penn's significance lies in his enduring influence on fashion photography and fine-art photography. He was among the earliest photographers to pose subjects against grey or white backdrops, using simplicity and monochromatic backgrounds to control natural lighting and enhance visual clarity. In an era when elaborate artificial lighting was the norm, his work stood out and influenced subsequent fashion photography. He also constructed a set of upright angled backdrops to form a stark, acute corner, used for portraits of subjects including John Hersey, Martha Graham, Marcel Duchamp, Pablo Picasso, Georgia O'Keeffe, W. H. Auden, and Igor Stravinsky. Beginning in 1964, Penn began experimenting with platinum printing, seeking to surpass the technical limitations of magazine reproduction. He hand-coated paper with platinum emulsion, used contact printing without enlargement, and developed techniques such as recoating a print with a secondary emulsion and making a second or third exposure on a single sheet to achieve greater depth and subtlety. He frequently introduced palladium and iron salts into his coatings. His still life compositions are sparse and highly organized, and his black-and-white prints are notable for deep contrast. Penn also ventured beyond creative boundaries with series such as Earthly Bodies, consisting of posed nudes taken in 1949 and 1950 but not exhibited until 1980. He continued to capture collections by favorite designers such as John Galliano for Dior, Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel, and Christian Lacroix for Vogue.

Did You Know?

• Penn's first photographic cover for Vogue appeared in October 1943.
• During World War II, Penn drove an ambulance in support of the British Eighth Army in Italy.
• Penn met his second wife, Swedish fashion model Lisa Fonssagrives, at a photo shoot in 1947.
• Beginning in 1964, Penn experimented with platinum printing, hand-coating paper with platinum emulsion.
• His series Earthly Bodies, consisting of posed nudes, was taken in 1949 and 1950 but not exhibited until 1980.

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