From his very first photograph, made for Vogue in 1943, to startlingly fresh images that he continues to make for that magazine today, Irving Penn again and again shows an uncanny ability to surprise the world with his art.
Included here are some of Penn's signature portraits, still lifes, and fashion photographs, along with the rough sketches and line drawings that provide a window into ideas and images in the making. The book is populated with artists, writers, and models whose lives intersected with Penn's; Picasso, Jean Cocteau, and Lisa Fonssagrives look out at us with that timeless intensity that characterizes an Irving Penn portrait. Many of the photographs are alternate poses or torn test fragments, pages from his personal "notebook"; others are newer-found discoveries, including a previously unpublished portrait of Truman Capote. Some of the most striking pages are of Penn's layered, exquisitely constructed mixed-media works and painted photographs.
With brief text excerpts and notations from Penn throughout, this is the most intimate and arresting book yet from one of the most admired artists of our time.
