The mighty Irving Penn

Contrasting style: Irving Penn’s portrait of Nicole Kidman, New York, 2003 is the exception in the show for its lightness, softness and contrived innocence
5 April 2012

"I invite the subject to the camera. I begin to search for an attitude." That’s how America’s most influential portrait photographer, Irving Penn, explained his technique. In the faces of the exhibited 120 celebrities from every artistic field, it’s obvious he found that "attitude".

This absorbing collection is a reminder of the lost quality of pre-digital printing and the dramatic blackness Penn attained. In 1946, while he was at American Vogue, props were mimimum. A plain backdrop and carpet over a stool (except for John Cage inside his "prepared" piano) let him exploit compositions involving triangles: bent legs and the angle of a head or hand worked into a pose. He caught Alfred Hitchcock hunched into a dark, threatening shape and Marlene Dietrich’s pale face, hovering above blackness.

His trademark construction of a claustrophobic corner in the studio saw dancers, models, actors, all reacting: Truman Capote crumpled in an overcoat, wonderfully vulnerable; the Duchess of Windsor, inanimate and cold.

As he moved closer into the faces, with time, Penn focused on the eyes. Often, one would be in shadow; others would be closed with a finger. Al Pacino’s are black like black olives. In portraying his fellow photographer, Richard Avedon, Penn faced him straight on, as if each was staring into each other’s lens.

Nicole Kidman is the exception in the show for its lightness and softness, and contrived innocence. Could the elderly photographer have revealed himself this one last time?
Until 6 June. Information: 020 7306 0055; www.npg.org.uk

Irving Penn Portraits
National Portrait Gallery
WC2

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