Photographer Irving Penn Dead At 92

Legendary and influential photographer Irving Penn, known for his riveting fashion photography and portraits, has died at age 92.

As Britannica.com notes:

Penn, the brother of the motion-picture director Arthur Penn, initially intended to become a painter, but at age 26 he took a job designing photographic covers for the fashion magazine Vogue. He began photographing his own ideas for covers and soon established himself as a fashion photographer. In 1950 he married model Lisa Fonssagrives, whom he photographed for much of his best work. His austere fashion images communicated elegance and luxury through compositional refinement and clarity of line rather than through the use of elaborate props and backdrops.

Penn also became an influential portraitist. He photographed a large number of celebrities, engaging each subject to sit for hours and to reveal his or her personality to the camera. In his portraits the subject is usually posed before a bare backdrop and photographed in natural northern light. The resulting images combine simplicity and directness with great formal sophistication. A memorable series of portraits he created in 1950—51, collectively called Small Trades, was of labourers in New York, Paris, and London formally posed in their work clothes and holding the tools of their trade. This project eventually extended to places such as Nepal, New Guinea, Dahomey (now Benin), and Morocco. Penn's later platinum prints of female nudes and of cigarette butts are characterized by the same tonal subtlety, compositional virtuosity, and serenity that mark his fashion photography and portraiture.

This Slate article from last year makes the point that Penn photographed so many important artists of the 20th Century that he became one as well.