Research

Irving Penn  

Penn (1917-2009) was an American photographer who moved from fashion and glamour to portraits and still life's. Penn was among the first to apply an artistic sense to the craft of photography.

Back in the 1940s and 50s Penn shot a basic series of studio portraits that captured the personalities of the celebrity's he photographed. 

Truman Capote, New York, 1948

Spencer Tracey, New York, 1948

Georgia O’Keeffe, New York, 1948

He positioned his subjects in an enclosed angular space. "This confinement surprisingly seemed to comfort people," Penn noted, "it soothed them. The walls were a surface to lean on or push against." 

Its interesting how the models reacted to the space, you can see that some looked quite timid and lost in the space but others used it to there advantage and added a cheeky pose, looking content and comfortable. I defiantly like Penn's project, its interesting to see how different people react to the same thing which i think is a great thing to explore and capture with photography.

The lighting I'm guessing that he only used maybe one or two lights (could be wrong) more in Truman Capote you can see the light is shining on one half of his face and the other side has quite a lot of shade and you can also see the shade from the chair and the model himself. So it is quite a simple set up but i like it, it lets you concentrate more on the poses the models are doing and just the intention Penn had with this project.

Pablo Picasso, Cannes, France, 1957

 

During the early part of Penn's career, he worked a lot with fashion. Taking pictures of the most photographed models in that day.

In the late fifties he stared to capture his subjects in a close-up pose against a bare grey background. 

I love looking at this image, there's so much detail and character (which i think you can achieve more with black and white). The shading makes Picasso more mysterious, the way hes looking makes you want to look away like you've been caught staring and hes saying  'what are you looking at?' its great.