Irving Penn

Inventive Paris Clothes 1909 1939: A Photographic Essay by Irving Penn. NY: A Studio Book / Viking Press, 1977. Hardcover in dust jacket, 96 pp. A superb collection of b/w photographs presented in essay format by influential fashion photographer Irving Penn. Best known for his classically elegant visual style and his long association with Vogue magazine, these photographs feature Paris fashions that appeared in Vreeland's exhibition "The Tens, The Twenties, The Thirties: Inventive Clothes/ 1909-1939" at the The Metropolitan Museum's Costume Institute, Dec. 14, 1973-May, 1974. The work of Paul Poiret, Madeleine Vionnet, Callot, Molyneux, Paquin, Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli are some of early 20th century French couture masters included in this look at fashion as it evolved from the Belle Epoque into the modern era, just before WWII. From the dust jacket: "The fashions of the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s were as glorious as they were socially reflective. Inspired by the exhibit organized by Diana Vreeland for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Irving Penn's masterly picture essay captures the flavor of the times as well as literal details of design. Because of her participation in and astute observation of, the scene in which these fashions were born, Diana Vreeland in her text is able to provide a unique glimpse into the lives of each of the couturiers, and her captions to Penn's sensitive photographs are rich in detail. From the straight-line creations of Paul Poiret to the classically modern work of Gabrielle Chanel and the fanciful innovations of Elsa Schiaparelli, Penn has included the most remarkable material--designs that provided the principles from which all fashion to follow would grow."

125 p. : 33 cm

A collection of thirty photographs by Irving Penn featuring actors, intellectuals, and other notable figures from his time.

"In a career that spans more than fifty years, American photographer Irving Penn (born 1917) has created some of the most arresting portraits, influential fashion studies, and provocative still lifes of the twentieth century. In the early 1960s when he turned from magazine work to platinum printing, he reinterpreted his earlier photographs, transforming them into the independent works of art that have been celebrated for the last thirty years. Extensively with the platinum process, making innumerable test strips in his quest to achieve remarkably subtle, rich tonal ranges and luxurious textures. When Penn rediscovered these test trips in the late 1980s, he arranged them in seventeen provocative collages, the Platinum Test Materials, which represent timeless meditations on his entire career: in demonstrating his search for perfection - and the difficulties in obtaining it - he has made this quest the very subject of his art." "This book reproduces the seventeen Platinum Test Materials, as well as the eighty-five platinum prints that are represented in these collages. Some of Penn's most important photographs are included, from portraits of Marcel Duchamp, Pablo Picasso, David Smith, and Saul Steinberg; to studies of indigenous peoples in New Guinea; innovative still lifes; and celebrated fashion studies."--Jacket.

"One of the world's preeminent photographers, Irving Penn is famous for insightful portraiture, surprising still life, and influential fashion work - he is less well known as a superb photographer of the female nude. His most important pictures in this genre were made over fifty years ago, when the then-young photographer engaged several artist's models in a number of intense sessions modeling only their unadorned bodies. These sessions took place on weekends and in the evenings, and were essentially an artistic antidote to the ephemeral fashion and surface world of the stylish ladies' magazines. The women Penn chose and the ways he viewed them produced nudes that were highly unorthodox by mid-twentieth-century standards: folded, twisted, and stretched, with extra belly, mounded hips, and puddled breasts, their fleshy torsos are sisters of Titian's and Rubens', while their mother in prodigality is the archaic fertility idol. Charged with powerful physical and sexual energy yet somehow chaste, they are among the most ambitious and successful nudes ever made.". "The great 1949-50 nudes have rarely been seen, and the complete nude sessions have never been the subject of serious study. This volume illustrates some fifty of Penn's exquisitely wrought prints in silver and platinum, in particularly faithful reproduction. Sequenced to reveal the artist's progressive exploration of his theme, and his increasingly liberal and personal vision, the photographs constitute a remarkable whole - a frieze of life based on a love affair with earthly goddesses."--BOOK JACKET.