Irving Penn is one of the most distinguished practitioners of portrait and fashion photography of the last four decades. His work is identified by its great refinement of craft, by the wit and grace of his formal invention, and by its unequaled sensitivity to the quality and character of light.

Backed by the lavish support of Vogue magazine, Penn brought a classic economy and concentration to the overblown world of fashion photography, to portraits of artists, writers, and theater people, and the ethnographic study of style and ornament in the little-known corners of West Africa, Nepal, Peru, and New Guinea.

By the 1970s Penn’s interest had shifted from the printed page as end product to the expressive possibilities of the photographic print. Through long, meticulous experiment he perfected his command of platinum printing to bring an even greater richness and clarity to his increasingly personal work.

“Penn’s private, stubborn, artistic intuitions”, writes Mr. Szarkowsky, “have revised our sense of the world’s content. His essential work is Spartan in its rigor, in his devotion to the sober elegance of clarity, in the high demands that it make of us regarding poise, grace, costume, style, and the definition of our selves”.