Irving Penn is the Fred Astaire of 20th-century photography. In his studio, a pile of cigarette butts became as pure as Communion wafers. BBC obit here. Many more to follow.
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Regina Hackett takes her Art to Go
Irving Penn is the Fred Astaire of 20th-century photography. In his studio, a pile of cigarette butts became as pure as Communion wafers. BBC obit here. Many more to follow.
an ArtsJournal blog
Isn’t Richard Avedon more the Fred Astaire of 20th-century photography? (Astaire even played a version of Avedon in “Funny Face.”) Penn’s poise makes him more Cary Grant.
I don’t associate Richard Avedon with dance at all. I think of him as the equivalent of a great graphics designer. Boom! Bam! Images! Penn had poise, but more than that, he had purity. Cary Grant is a sex symbol because his purity was always deliciously in doubt.
I just mean that in terms of their fashion photography, Avedon was often running around his sets, making his models dance and jump, while Penn’s images were always so perfectly composed and still (I’m thinking just visually of Cary Grant leaning against a bar….) Both of them were brilliant designers, but Penn’s designs were still, where Avedon’s often captured spontaneous movement. (Though it’s true, Avedon did a lot of elaborately composed stuff too…I’m thinking of the earlier work in Paris – the Audrey Hepburn and Dovima-era stuff.) Both of their later work is very composed – their portraits. Avedon stopped jumping around after the ’60s.
It’s interesting that both of them came up under Russian art directors, arguably the best of the century, and then their careers took some similar twists and turns…Penn’s Mudmen to Avedon’s American West, etc.