Irving Penn

Irving Penn

Irving Penn is an American photographer who was born on June the 16th 1917 and unfortunately died on October 7th 2009. Irving was best known for his fashion, portrait and still life photography, an example of the kind of high profile work Irving would be commissioned for is that during his career Irving worked for Vogue magazine and also independent clients Issey Miyake and Clinique.

Irving Penn's portrait work is really impressive to me. I like black and white images, (especially portraits in black and white) and high contrast images also.
Another thing i like is how almost all of his portrait shots have gray/black backgrounds, this does give the images a darker feel in some instances but i really like the way a portrait looks with a darker background. 

The majority of the portrait's i saw of Irving Penn's work whilst conducting my research, was of relatively famous people, and i have chosen three images i found that i liked to talk about.

This is a portrait of Audrey Hepburn by Irving. I like this because although i prefer to show little or no emotion whilst taking portrait's i do like how her personality shows through in this portrait. Its a simple expression but at the same time shows a lot. Another thing i liked was that her clothes are so dark that it doesn't distract you away from her face. I am not sure if this was the intention by Irving but to me it looks like the clothes are minimal so that you can concentrate on her face and her smile.

This is a portrait of Marilyn Monroe by Irving. This shot has more of a smooth background with more of an even color compared to the first example i showed. I do like how she is looking of camera, just the slight way she looks down makes her look sad or distracted. One thing that is different to the first example i showed is that Marilyn has a sparkly low cut dress on and this is a distraction from her face. But to me this makes me think that it is almost a metaphor for her life. I'm sure this wasn't the intention when Irving took the photo, but as someone who is looking back on her life, she was always in the spotlight and always looked glamorous and happy and that was the distraction (like the dress) but deep down she was sad and depressed and she supposedly took her own life, (looking sad in the photo). 

This is a portrait of president J F. Kennedy by Irving. I really like the use of a prop in this portrait (the chair) it kind of makes the portrait look more relaxed but at the same time it makes it look like a school photograph to me, just with the way his hands are placed. This photo to me looks like it is very high in contrast and it has a great deal of dark shadows making the direction in which the light is shinning very obvious.