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PENN ON PAPER

Irving Penn photographed nearly every mover and shaker of the 20th century. A survey of his portraits reveals why they trusted him, writes Helena Douglas ...

Special to MORE INTELLIGENT LIFE

Timeless and understated, Irving Penn’s portraits resonate with compositional clarity. With simple lighting, a bare studio and few props, he stripped his photographs to their essence—a blend of pose, gesture and expression. His pictures feel patient, the product of time spent between two people, one bearing a camera.

Now, after years of negotiation, 120 photographs from the Penn archive and museums around the world have gone on show at London’s National Portrait Gallery. The result is a powerful tribute to one of the 20th century’s most influential photographers.

Penn, who died last year, aged 92, took hundreds of portraits over a career that lasted seven decades, with no waning of his creative strength. Born in New Jersey in 1917, he studied design in Philadelphia before interning at Harper’s Bazaar in New York, where he had several drawings published. He used the payment from these to buy his first camera, a Rolleiflex, which would become his professional staple.

Penn’s lucky break came in 1943, when Alexander Liberman, the art director at Vogue, hired him to think of cover ideas. Within a year Penn had published his first cover photograph—a still life—for the magazine. Vogue gave him access to his many subjects, and soon he was training his lens on anyone interesting. Alexander Calder, Cecil Beaton, Leonard Bernstein, W.H. Auden, Alfred Hitchcock, Lillian Hellman, Christian Dior and George Balanchine all gave him something unique. He went on to shoot over 150 covers, more than any other photographer.

His portraits were notable for their restraint. He posed his sitters simply, often backing them into a corner. Trapped between wall and lens, his subjects revealed clues to their character: Martha Graham, an American pioneer of modern dance, is feisty; the Duchess of Windsor remote; Truman Capote, in outsize overcoat, a naughty boy.

Occasionally Penn asked his sitters to pose on a pile of boxes covered with a frayed piece of carpet. Salvador Dalí sits legs akimbo, hands on knees, elbows out, his extraordinary moustache pointing skyward. His eyes seem to be baiting Penn's lens, challenging him. Also from the 1940s is a portrait of Marlene Dietrich, clad in black and gazing at the photographer over her shoulder. Ordinarily a stunning intersection of angles, her figure is cloaked and muted, and her expression looks haunted, even disturbed. The result is compelling and uncomfortable.

From the 1950s Penn’s style began to change. He opened his own studio in New York in 1954, and used its natural daylight—“the most delicious of several kinds of light”—to photograph his subjects close up. With his trusty Rolleiflex, a Deardorff V8 and a Hasselblad, he created less formal, more expressive images. Faces loom from the corner of frames, tops of heads are cropped, eyes blaze with intensity and brows reveal vulnerability. Penn lit Pablo Picasso from the side, casting much of his face in shadow. The aging artist is framed and concealed by his felt hat and upturned collar, and a single eye stares inscrutably at the viewer, perhaps with a broody glaze.

Penn was also an accomplished technician. The tonal richness of his images comes from years spent studying the chemical processes of film development and honing his silver-gelatin printing techniques. Deep velvety blacks, humming greys and singing whites create depth and atmosphere. Later he moved to the older method of platinum printing, which softened his images while adding more details.

This remarkable exhibition, hung chronologically in the calm of the Wolfson Gallery, shows Penn's dedication to portraiture throughout his life. While in his 70s he took notable shots of Richard Avedon, Helmut Newton, Jasper Johns and Julian Schnabel. A late photograph of Nicole Kidman is gentle, dreamy and full of contrived innocence. In contrast, a portrait of Al Pacino (pictured above) is dark and bold, his mouth ajar, hair wild and eyes burning like coals. Simple and dramatic, it captures Penn’s talent for surprise.

“Irving Penn: Portraits” is at the National Portrait Gallery, London, until June 6th

(Helena Douglas, a writer working in London, is a regular contributor to More Intelligent Life.)

Picture credit: Al Pacino, New York, 1995; © The Irving Penn Foundation