Irving Penn
Irving Penn
Irving Penn was an American photographer known for his fashion photography, portraits, and still lifes. Penn's career included work at Vogue magazine, and independent advertising work for clients including Issey Miyake and Clinique. His work has been exhibited internationally and continues to inform the art of photography...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPhotographer
Date of Birth16 June 1917
CityPlainfield, NJ
CountryUnited States of America
Working on photography is working on oneself.
Most of the time the ones who dislike the pictures the most confirm to me that the picture has hit home and is probably truer than I know. Nobody minds a boring picture, they mind a picture that has gotten to the soft core.
Using simple equipment and daylight alone is for me a pleasure and a replenishment.
In portrait photography there is something more profound that we seek inside a person, while being painfully aware that a limitation of our medium is that the inside is recordable only insofar as it is apparent on the outside...Very often what lies behind the facade is rare and more wonderful than the subject knows or dares to believe.
Photographing a cake can be art.
I myself have always stood in the awe of the camera. I recognize it for the instrument it is, part Stradivarius, part scalpel.
A good photograph is one that communicates a fact, touches the heart and leaves the viewer a changed person for having seen it. It is, in a word, effective.
Sensitive people faced with the prospect of a camera portrait put on a face they think is one they would like to show the world very often what lies behind the facade is rare and more wonderful than the subject knows or dares to believe.
I can get obsessed by anything if i look at it long enough. That's the curse of being a photographer.