Irving Penn: Photographing a cake can be art
The brilliant fashion photographer Irving Penn said, "Photographing a cake can be art." Much is made of the phrase 'a true genius' and is too often over used. In terms of the development of fashion photography, "true genius' rightly applies to Irving Penn. He changed the way we saw the world, and our perception of what is beautiful. He went on from black and white to color. Women to still life.
Irving Penn can single-handedly be credited with elevating fashion photography to an art form . His pictures often appeared in the pages of Vogue. And shooting up to his last days. Penn frequently stressed the ephemeral nature of life by bringing out interesting flaws and impurities in his subjects, such as wrinkles, hairs, or dirt, which would have gone unnoticed on cluttered, distraction , or ornate backgrounds. He said, "Sensitive people faced with the prospect of a camera portrait put on a face they think is one they would like to show the world. Very often what lies behind the facade is rare and more wonderful than the subject knows or dares to believe." Irving Penn, 1917-2009. RIP.
Irving Penn at a photo shoot with a New Guinea mud man and his child in 1972.
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