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Irving Penn Color Photography

American, 1917-2009

With a career in magazines that spanned the mid-20th century heyday of print journalism and lasted through the first decade of the 21st, Irving Penn was the preeminent photographer for six decades at Vogue, where he worked right up until his death, in 2009, at age 92.

Penn’s refined and dynamic photography of models, celebrities and products like Clinique and Jell-O pudding, all shot in compositions of stunning equipoise in the cool remove of his minimal studio setups, were designed to stop traffic and cut through the clutter of magazine pages.

Penn flourished under the mentorship of two legendary art directors: Harper’s Bazaar‘s Alexey Brodovitch and Vogue‘s Alexander Liberman, both Russian émigrés like Penn’s father. Brodovitch introduced Penn to Surrealism and avant-garde photography as his teacher at the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art and hired him as his assistant at Harper’s Bazaar during the summers of 1937 and ’38. Penn bought his first camera after graduating that year. He met Liberman in 1941, passing off to the recent New York transplant his freelance art director job at Saks Fifth Avenue. Liberman returned the favor by hiring Penn at Vogue in 1943 to sketch cover concepts, later encouraging him to shoot his unconventional juxtapositions of accessories and household items himself.

Assigned to photograph some portraits in the mid-1940s, Penn took a cue from the stage-set windows at Saks. He angled two studio flats in his studio and placed his subjects, including Truman Capote, Jerome Robbins and Salvador Dalí, in the resulting tight corner, literally and psychologically. Spencer Tracy leans jauntily against the walls in his portrait, while Georgia O'Keeffe simmers straight-armed in her confinement.

Penn didn’t work well with the distractions of the outside world. In 1950, when he was instructed by Liberman to buy an evening jacket and shoot the couture shows in Paris, he managed the assignment by having the dresses brought to him. He rented a top-floor studio with great light but no electricity and photographed models, including Lisa Fonssagrives (whom he married shortly after), against a mottled gray theater curtain that he continued to use for the rest of his career. Between deliveries from Dior and Balenciaga, he began his personal project “Small Trades,” in which he had local Parisians — a knife grinder, a mailman, a cucumber seller — pose for him with tools of their trade against the same backdrop. (He extended the series in London and New York.)

While Penn made bold, reductive still lifes for advertising campaigns throughout his career, in 1972 he applied his sculptural understanding of form to the unlikeliest of subjects: cigarette butts he gathered from the streets. The Museum of Modern Art showed Penn’s cigarette butts in 1975, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibited another series of material salvaged from the street in 1977. At this time, Penn also began revisiting his earlier photographs, reprinting them at larger scale and with the more painterly quality achieved with the platinum-palladium process. In his lush, oversized platinum-palladium prints, he elevates the lowly castoffs to heroic objects worthy of archaeological scrutiny.

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Artist: Irving Penn
Still life with Watermelon, NY
By Irving Penn
Located in Miami, FL
Phillips de Pury Collection of Alain Dominique Perrin Printed 1985, One from an edition of 21 dye transfer prints Signed Irving Penn Verso Literature: Szarkowki, Irving Penn Irving...
Category

1940s Modern Irving Penn Color Photography

Materials

Dye Transfer

Still life with Watermelon, NY
By Irving Penn
Located in Miami, FL
Phillips de Pury Collection of Alain Dominique Perrin Printed 1985, One from an edition of 21 dye transfer prints Signed Irving Penn Verso Literature: Szarkowki, Irving Penn Irving...
Category

1940s Modern Irving Penn Color Photography

Materials

Dye Transfer

Woman with Roses on her Arm (Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn in a Lafaurie Dress)
By Irving Penn
Located in London, GB
Woman with Roses on her Arm (Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn in a Lafaurie Dress), Paris, 1950 Signed, inscribed with title, edition and priting details and stamped with photographer's copyri...
Category

Late 20th Century Irving Penn Color Photography

Materials

Silver Gelatin

Woman with Sunblock, New York - Irving Penn (Colour Photography)
By Irving Penn
Located in London, GB
Woman with Sunblock, New York - Irving Penn (Colour Photography) Signed, titled, dated and stamped with photographer's copyright stamp on reverse Dye transfer print, printed 1985 15....
Category

1960s Irving Penn Color Photography

Materials

Dye Transfer

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Previously Available Items
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Photographer Irving Penn (American, 1917–2009) is celebrated for his compelling portraits, scenes, and still lifes, in genres ranging from fashion to travel photography. Born in Plai...
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Irving Penn color photography for sale on 1stDibs.

Find a wide variety of authentic Irving Penn color photography available for sale on 1stDibs. You can also browse by medium to find art by Irving Penn in dye transfer print, silver gelatin print and more. Much of the original work by this artist or collective was created during the 20th century and is mostly associated with the modern style. Not every interior allows for large Irving Penn color photography, so small editions measuring 14 inches across are available. Customers who are interested in this artist might also find the work of Robert Stivers, Julius Shulman, and Michael DeCamp. Irving Penn color photography prices can differ depending upon medium, time period and other attributes. On 1stDibs, the price for these items starts at $61,937 and tops out at $185,000, while the average work can sell for $185,000.
Questions About Irving Penn Color Photography
  • 1stDibs ExpertApril 5, 2022
    Celebrated American fashion photographer Irving Penn made great contributions to photography through his use of simple backgrounds. This gave him greater control over aspects like the lighting, and asserted his subjects and their fashions as the sole focus of the composition. Shop a collection of Irving Penn photography from some of the world’s top sellers on 1stDibs.

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