Irving Penn: Beyond Beauty

Beren and Graves Galleries

September 30, 2017–January 7, 2018

Photographs!

The negative 1. Camera—lens, shutter, and light reflexive surface (the film)

2. Film is coated with a mixture of light-sensitive crystals (typically silver and halogen mixed with gelatin), which cluster together when the exposed to the light

3. Light “burns” or “exposes” the crystals, recording the light pattern that was seen through the lens —the image

4. Film is then developed—exposed grains become silver, unexposed areas (those impacted with less light) stay silver-halide crystals

5. Film is “fixed,” which arrests the chemical process, then removes the remaining silver-halide crystals so only the silver grains remain

6. Film strip is then washed to remove any remaining chemicals, and then dried

Photographs!

The print 1. Now we need to transfer that image onto another light sensitive material so

we can see it—photo paper, which is coated with silver in the same way the negative is (called emulsion)

2. Negative is placed in an enlarger, which is placed over photo paper, casting a shadow over the paper

3. The paper is exposed for a specific amount of time using light from the enlarger

4. This time, the densest parts of the film negative receive the least amount of light, making them the lightest and brightest images of the page

5. Like the negative, the process ends with chemical that stop the development process, and then finally with washing the print to remove all excess chemicals

6. Penn will experiment with different chemical coatings, exposure times, developing papers, etc.– platinum instead of silver made even richer prints with more tonal variation (blacker blacks), but could looked coarse; palladium produced lovely grays but lacked true blacks, combined them

L: Irving Penn, Harlequin Dress (Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn), New York, 1950, printed 1979, platinum-palladium print

R: Irving Penn, Cigarette No. 42, New York, 1972, printed 1974, platinum-palladium print

commercial vs. art vs. documentary

fashion vs. art

beautiful vs. ugly

luxury vs. everyday

permanent vs. fleeting

Irving Penn Timeline

1917 •Born in Plainfeild, New Jersey

1934-38

•Attends Philidelphia Museum School of Industrial Art

•Becomes Alexey Brodovitch's assistant at Harper's Bazaar.

1938 •Penn buys his first camera, a Rolleiflex

1941-42 •Travels through the American South and to Cuzco Mexico to spend a year painting.

1943 •Hired to Vouge by Art Director Alexander Liberman and has his first cover on October 1.

1948

•Travels to France, Italy, Spain, and Peru for Vouge

•After completeing fashion editorials in Lima, he prolongs the stay to make portraits of local people in a daylight studio in Cuzco.

1949-50 •Photographs a series of nudes which he prints using an experimental process of bleaching and redeveloping.

1950

•Striking fashion photographs by Penn appear in Vogue. Many of these feature the Swedish model Lisa Fonssagrives

•She an Penn marry in London the same year

1952 •Begins advertising in addition to editorial work

1960's

•Publishes his first book, "Moments Preserved"

•Continues fashion and portrait photography for Vogue; begins series of flowers; travels for Vogue to Japan and Crete

•Begins experiments to develop a complex method for printing in platinum and palladium metals.

1967

•January: Travels to Dahomey (now Benin)

•October: Travels to Nepal

1968 •Travels to Cameroon

1970 •Travels to new Guinea

1970's

•Pursues photographic projects concieved for the platinum palladium process

•Exhibitions at MoMA, MeET, and Marlborough Gallery

1971 • Travels to Morocco

1984-89 • "Irving Penn" a retrospective exhibition at the MoMA, tours widely in the US and abroad

1986 • Penn begins collaboration with fashion designer Issey Miyake

1987 • Penn gifts 120 works to the Smithsonian Insitute in Washington DC

1990

• "Irving Penn: Master Images" retrospective jointly organized by the National Portrait Gallery and the National Museum of American Art in Washington DC

1992 • Wife, Lisa Fonssagrives, dies in New York

1990-2000

•Penn's innovative portraits, still life, fashion, and beauty photographs continue to appear reguarly in Vogue

•Also persues a number of personal projects and experiments. Still life work flourishes, he returns to flowers and nudes as subjects, sursues complex technical experiments with cameras and printing, in addition to painting, drawing, and printing

1995 •Penn travels to Paris to photograph the Haute Couture collections for the final time

•Donates a majority of his archies and 130 fine art prints to the Art Insitute of Chicago

1997 • "Irving Penn: A Career in Photography" retrospective at the Art Institute of Chicago

2002

• "Earthly Bodies: Irving Penn Nudes, 1949-1950" exhibition at the MET

• Simultaneously, "Dancer: 1999 Nudes" exhibition held at the Whiney Museum of American Art

2004 • Photographs his 165th Vogue cover

2005 • Establishes the Irving Penn Foundation

2006 • Returns to flowers as a photographic subject

2009 • Irving Penn dies at his home in New York at the age of 92

L: Irving Penn, Harlequin Dress (Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn), New York, 1950, printed 1979, platinum-palladium print

R: Irving Penn, Cigarette No. 42, New York, 1972, printed 1974, platinum-palladium print

commercial vs. art vs. documentary

fashion vs. art

beautiful vs. ugly

luxury vs. everyday

permanent vs. fleeting

L: Alexey Brodovitch

R: Richard Avedon, Suzy Parker and Robin Tattersall, coat by Dior, Place de la Concorde,

Paris, August 1, 1956, gelatin-silver print

L: Evans, Alabama Tenant Farmer Wife (Allie Mae Burroughs), 1936, gelatin silver print

R: Atget, During the Eclipse, 1912, gelatin silver print

L: Irving Penn, Shop Window, Mexico, 1942, gelatin silver print

R: Irving Penn, Eye in a Keyhole, 1953, printed 1984, dye transfer print

L: Irving Penn, Single Oriental Poppy, New York, 1968, printed 1987, dye transfer print

R: Irving Penn, New York Still Life, 1947, printed 1978, platinum-palladium print

L: Irving Penn, Single Oriental Poppy, New York, 1968, printed 1987, dye transfer print

R: Osias Beert, Breakfast Still Life, oil on canvas, 1620-1624

L: Irving Penn, Coffee Pot, New York, 2007, silver print

R: Irving Penn, Cracked Egg, New York, 1958, printed 2000, chromogenic print

L: Irving Penn, Chimney Sweep, London, 1950, printed 1976, platinum-palladium print

R: Irving Penn, Salvador Dali, 1947, gelatin-silver print

L: Irving Penn, Vionnet Harness Dress, New York, 1974, printed 1984, selenium toned

gelatin silver print

R: Irving Penn, Balenciaga Sleeve (Regine), Paris, 1950, silver print

L: Irving Penn, Nude No. 58, New York, 1949-1950, printed 1976, platinum-palladium

print

R: Nike of Samothrace, 200-190 BCE, marble

L: Irving Penn, Nude No. 150, New York, 1949/50, printed June/July 1989, platinum-palladium print

R: Irving Penn, Nude No. 147, New York, 1949-1950, printed 1969, platinum-palladium/palladium-

iridium print

Penn wanted to undermine the idea that whatever’s in the

picture is sort of an ideal condition and the lasting

condition, especially in a magazine about beauty. Penn

wanted to undermine that because if you’re an artist and

your experience shows you that the world is a much more

complicated place, how could you pretend? You only have

to dive into the right literature to understand the post—

war, it was an existential moment and the world as it was

[previously] known had come to an end and many people

had suffered. Because of Penn, we now see flowers that

are dying as beautiful things and his vision of the reality

of life and death is what makes his work profound.”

-Maria Morris Hambourg, co-curator of Irving Penn:

Centennial

“Incongruous

contiguity”