With a career in magazines that spanned the mid-20th century heyday of print journalism and lasted through the first decade of the 21st, Irving Penn was the preeminent photographer for six decades at Vogue, where he worked right up until his death, in 2009, at age 92.
Penn’s refined and dynamic photography of models, celebrities and products like Clinique and Jell-O pudding, all shot in compositions of stunning equipoise in the cool remove of his minimal studio setups, were designed to stop traffic and cut through the clutter of magazine pages.
Penn flourished under the mentorship of two legendary art directors: Harper’s Bazaar‘s Alexey Brodovitch and Vogue‘s Alexander Liberman, both Russian émigrés like Penn’s father. Brodovitch introduced Penn to Surrealism and avant-garde photography as his teacher at the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art and hired him as his assistant at Harper’s Bazaar during the summers of 1937 and ’38. Penn bought his first camera after graduating that year. He met Liberman in 1941, passing off to the recent New York transplant his freelance art director job at Saks Fifth Avenue. Liberman returned the favor by hiring Penn at Vogue in 1943 to sketch cover concepts, later encouraging him to shoot his unconventional juxtapositions of accessories and household items himself.
Assigned to photograph some portraits in the mid-1940s, Penn took a cue from the stage-set windows at Saks. He angled two studio flats in his studio and placed his subjects, including Truman Capote, Jerome Robbins and Salvador Dalí, in the resulting tight corner, literally and psychologically. Spencer Tracy leans jauntily against the walls in his portrait, while Georgia O'Keeffe simmers straight-armed in her confinement.
Penn didn’t work well with the distractions of the outside world. In 1950, when he was instructed by Liberman to buy an evening jacket and shoot the couture shows in Paris, he managed the assignment by having the dresses brought to him. He rented a top-floor studio with great light but no electricity and photographed models, including Lisa Fonssagrives (whom he married shortly after), against a mottled gray theater curtain that he continued to use for the rest of his career. Between deliveries from Dior and Balenciaga, he began his personal project “Small Trades,” in which he had local Parisians — a knife grinder, a mailman, a cucumber seller — pose for him with tools of their trade against the same backdrop. (He extended the series in London and New York.)
While Penn made bold, reductive still lifes for advertising campaigns throughout his career, in 1972 he applied his sculptural understanding of form to the unlikeliest of subjects: cigarette butts he gathered from the streets. The Museum of Modern Art showed Penn’s cigarette butts in 1975, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibited another series of material salvaged from the street in 1977. At this time, Penn also began revisiting his earlier photographs, reprinting them at larger scale and with the more painterly quality achieved with the platinum-palladium process. In his lush, oversized platinum-palladium prints, he elevates the lowly castoffs to heroic objects worthy of archaeological scrutiny.
Find vintage Irving Penn photography on 1stDibs.
$4,900Sale Price|67% Off
Untitled (Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn) (~67% OFF - LIMITED TIME ONLY)
By Irving Penn
Located in Kansas City, MO
Irving Penn Title: Untitled (Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn) Medium: Glossy, fibre based paper Date: New York, circa 1949 Dimensions: 11 x 14 inches Stamped ...
Photographic Paper, Silver Gelatin
$10,000Sale Price|20% Off
Two Men in White Masks, Cuzco
By Irving Penn
Located in Carmel-by-the-Sea, CA
Printed in 1984. Signed, titled, dated, artist’s copyright on back of mount. Stamped ‘signed silver prints not exceeding,’ 20 written in pencil. Annotated, “Rives BFK mount’ and ‘ton...
Silver Gelatin
![Mermaid Dress (Rochas) [Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn], Paris](https://a.1stdibscdn.com/irving-penn-photography-mermaid-dress-rochas-lisa-fonssagrives-penn-paris-for-sale/a_9323/1615324844586/Penn_Mermaid_Dress_1200_master.jpg?width=240)
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Price Upon Request
Mermaid Dress (Rochas) [Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn], Paris
By Irving Penn
Located in New York, NY
Mermaid Dress (Rochas) [Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn], Paris, 1950/June 1979 Signed, titled, dated, numbered, and inscribed in pencil, verso Platinum-pallad...
Platinum
Price Upon Request
Joan Miró
By Irving Penn
Located in New York, NY
Signed, verso Various copyright and studio stamps, verso Vintage gelatin silver print This artwork is offered by ClampArt, located in New York City.
Silver Gelatin
Emma in Botafogo, Rio de Janeiro, April 1984
By Jonathan Becker
Located in New York, NY
Emma in Botafogo, Rio de Janeiro, 1984 Pão de Açucar, (Sugarloaf Mountain), Rio’s defining landmark looms in the background. Photographed by Jonathan Becker Contemporary 14" x 14.5...
Platinum
$250
H 7.49 in W 9.49 in
Yesteryear's Wire Walker (Unidentified) – original circus photograph, 1950s
Located in Middletown, NY
Gelatin silver print mounted on board, 7 1/2 x 9 1/2 in. (190 x 241 mm) from the Roland Butler Collection, Press Agent, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus (1930s-1960s) Roland...
Photographic Paper, Silver Gelatin
Paul Newman and Lee Marvin (Signed)
By Terry O'Neill
Located in New York, NY
Ed. 45/50, signed by Terry O'Neill. Includes black frame. Terry O’Neill CBE is one of the world’s most collected photographers with work hanging in national art galleries and privat...
Silver Gelatin
$850
H 11 in W 14 in
Vintage Silver Gelatin Photograph Print, Girls on a Beach Photo, Two Man Show
Located in Surfside, FL
Richard Lebowitz, b. 1937, American, (RISD Faculty 1964-1995, Photography; Professor Emeritus) Tom Young, b. 1951, American, (RISD MFA 1977, Photography) TIT...
Photographic Paper, Silver Gelatin
$30,000
H 8 in W 10 in
Andy Warhol with Ronald Perelman at the Beverly Hills Hotel
By Andy Warhol
Located in Beverly Hills, CA
This work is unique. Stamped twice on the reverse by both The Estate of Andy Warhol and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts inventory number written on verso and initialed Tim Hunt (“T.J.H.”). This is a unique work which comes with a Certificate of Provenance from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts issued by Christie’s, the acting registrar of The Foundation. Provenance: Estate of the Artist to The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts to Hedges Projects...
Silver Gelatin
$8,000
H 8 in W 10 in
Photo of Andy Warhol taken at his Frankfurt exhibition
By Bob Colacello
Located in Beverly Hills, CA
This is a unique photograph of Andy Warhol in front of his self-portraits, taken by Bob Colacello, at Warhol's Frankfurt exhibition, possibly in 1981. Ma...
Silver Gelatin
$962
H 33.47 in W 44.1 in D 1.97 in
Burlesque Series, Belles of Shoreditch, The Whoopee Club, London
By Richard Heeps
Located in Cambridge, GB
Belles of Shoreditch, Richard Heeps photograph taken backstage at the London Burlesque event The Whoopee Club. Richard Heeps became well-known for his Burlesque Photography after he...
Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Silver Gelatin
Linda Hutton in the attic tub, Southampton, August 1974
By Jonathan Becker
Located in New York, NY
Linda Hutton in the attic tub, Southampton, August 1974 X Photographed by Jonathan Becker Contemporary 16" x 16.5" Archival Platinum/Palladium Print Edition Nº 1 of 6 Certificate o...
Platinum
Halston, Dolly Parton & Andy Warhol at Studio 54
By Andy Warhol
Located in Beverly Hills, CA
This work is unique. Stamped on the reverse by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Foundation number also on verso. The work comes with an Authentication Letter from the Andy Warhol Authentication Board, Inc. Provenance: Gift of the Artist to Pat Hackett to Hedges Projects...
Silver Gelatin
Marilyn From the Reverse
By Philippe Halsman
Located in Buffalo, NY
The work offered for sale here is an original vintage silver gelatin print hand created by Halsman in 1953. Philippe Halsman was at one point considered the best photo-portraitist in France. He had an incessant interest in faces: “Every face I see seems to hide—and sometimes fleetingly reveal—the mystery of another human being.” Halsman’s photographs of politicians, celebrities, and intellectuals were featured widely in magazines like LIFE and Vogue. His more famous subjects included the likes of Marc Chagall, Le Corbusier, Audrey Hepburn, and Albert Einstein. He also had a 37-year collaboration with Salvador Dalí, which resulted in several famous surrealist series including the “Dalí’s Mustache...
Photographic Paper, Silver Gelatin
Marie-Chantal & Robert Miller
By Andy Warhol
Located in Beverly Hills, CA
This work is unique. Stamped on the reverse by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Foundation number also on verso. The work comes with an Authentication Letter from th...
Silver Gelatin
$18,000
H 8 in W 10 in
Anti Defamation League Dinner with Halston & Elizabeth Taylor
By Andy Warhol
Located in Beverly Hills, CA
This is a unique photographic work. Stamped on the reverse by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Foundation number also on verso. The work comes with an Authentication...
Silver Gelatin
New Guinea man with Painted-on Glasses
By Irving Penn
Located in New York, NY
Irving Penn New Guinea man with Painted-on Glasses, 1970, Printed April 1979 Platinum Palladium Print 20 x 20 in Signed and numbered edition of 50
Platinum
Callot Swallow-tail Dress
By Irving Penn
Located in New York, NY
Irving Penn (1917-2009) Callot Swallow-tail Dress, 1974 platinum-palladium print, printed 1978 signed, titled, dated, numbered edition of 19', in pencil, 20 x 20 inches
Platinum
Football Face, New York
By Irving Penn
Located in New York, NY
Photographer Irving Penn (American, 1917–2009) is celebrated for his compelling portraits, scenes, and still lifes, in genres ranging from fashion to travel photography. Born in Plai...
Cate Blanchett as Queen Elizabeth I, New York
By Irving Penn
Located in New York, NY
Photographer Irving Penn (American, 1917–2009) is celebrated for his compelling portraits, scenes, and still lifes, in genres ranging from fashion to travel photography. Born in Plai...