The Photography That Changed The Way We See the World: Irving Penn

If you love photography, or even scroll endlessly on Instagram, I can promise that you have been inspired by Irving Penn in some form. When I first entered the exhibit at the DeYoung, I was struck by the false familiarity that I felt with some of the more iconic images.

Penn is perhaps best known for his Vogue covers and celebrity portraits. He was born in 1917 to a Russian Jewish family in Plainfield New Jersey. His first Vogue cover was published in 1943. He would go on to be one of Vogue’s longest-standing photographers.

Irving Penn. Mouth (for L’Oréal), New York, 1986. Dye transfer print. Image: 18 5/8 × 18 1/4 in. (47.3 × 46.4 cm).
The Irving Penn Foundation. © The Irving Penn Foundation.

Penn left an undeniable mark on the art world. Many people have copied his style. Despite this, he stands out as one of the few artists able to consistently straddle the line between commercial and fine art. “We live in an age of influencers with fake images and faked realities, but Penn was completely invested in exposing the constructions.” said Emma Acker, curator of American Art at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

Irving Penn. Still Life with Watermelon, New York, 1947. Dye transfer print. 24 1/8 × 19 3/4 in. (61.3 × 50.2 cm). The Irving Penn Foundation. © Condé Nast.

Still lives greet you as you walk into the exhibit. Salad ingredients sit in lush arrangements. Meticulously composed black and white images of New York street signs offer painterly and sometimes cheeky views of bygone eras. Penn’s attention to detail in these made me realize that he might have been more still life photographer than portrait artist. He was a master of what the viewer was allowed to see. Why would we need to see an entire dress when the elegant point of a collar or fall of the sleeve would suffice?

Irving Penn. Audrey Hepburn, Paris,
1951. Gelatin silver print. Image: 13 3/4 x 13 7/16 in. (35 x 34.2 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation, 2021. © Condé Nast.

On the opposite walls are some of Penn’s earlier portraits. A young Truman Capote sits in repose with a cigarette in hand. Fashion icons and artists such as Salvador Dalí, Igor Stravinsky, Joe Lewis, and Elsa Schiapaerlli array themselves in different poses. I notice something strangely familiar from portrait to portrait. Whether the subjects of Penn’s portraits are squished in a corner, sitting on top of boxes or standing full bodied, the backdrop is always the same.

It turns out that Penn found a used theater curtain in Paris painted with grey clouds. He would go on to use this backdrop for over 60 years. In some images, Penn would draw away from his subjects. In those photos you can see the entirety of the backdrop. This gives a rawness to the elegant fashion contained within the square.

Irving Penn. Joe Louis, February 15, 1948. Gelatin silver print. 9 15/16 x 8 1/16 in. (25.3 x 20.5 cm.). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation, 2021. © Condé Nast

Going farther into the exhibit, you see Penn’s Small Trades series taken in Paris. This is a collection of delightful portraits of people in food service and laborers. Look for the the cucumber seller. Seeing his tattoo and tired eyes while he languidly brandishes a humungous cucumber at the lens is worth more than a moment of study. Also notable, is that the only woman in this collection is the balloon seller. Penn would go on to photograph a similar series in England and again in the U.S.

Woman in Chicken Hat (Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn), New York, 1949. Gelatin silver print. Image: 15 1/16 x 14 3/8 in. (38.3 x 36.5 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation. ©The Irving Penn Foundation.

There is a room dedicated to San Francisco counter-culture. Nude dancers from a work shop at Anna Halprin’s studio and members of Hell’s Angels make up some of the characters in this set. The golden locks of one of the Hell’s Angels mesmerized me for a disturbingly long time.

02) Irving Penn. Hells Angel (Doug), San Francisco, 1967. Gelatin silver print. Image: 18 13/16x 19 11/16 in. (47.8 x 50 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation, 2021. © The Irving Penn Foundation.

I’m not going to go into the problematic aspects of his ethnographic portraits too much…but it is there. The exhibition does address the place of Penn’s photographs of colonized cultures in art history, the colonial implications of the context for which Penn took them, and where they were presented to the public. Many of the images ended up in fashion magazines. The exhibition includes feedback from contemporary members of the same cultures that the subjects of the photographs were members of. By doing this, the exhibition gave more nuance to this complicated power dynamic. It will interesting to see how the subject of othering will be presented in future exhibitions.

Courtesy of the DeYoung/Legion of Honor.

Plan for a long visit or several shorter trips to truly take in this massive exhibit. Irving’s Penn’s level of craft and decades-long career make for a must-see show. The show will go until July 21, 2024.

For more information or tickets, visit the de Young’s website.