Irving Penn, Before and After Review of the exhibition 'Penn & Fashion' at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie
By Jean Grogan
The history of fashion photography can be divided into before and after Irving Penn.
On the eve of Paris Fashion Week, the MEP (Maison Européenne de la Photographie) is marking its 30th anniversary with 'Penn & Fashion,' an Irving Penn retrospective that focuses on his work for American Vogue. The exhibition includes 140 original photographs drawn from MEP’s permanent collection and loans from the Irving Penn Foundation in New York, the Nicola Erni Collection in Switzerland and the Miyake Issey Foundation in Tokyo. […]
'Penn & Fashion' unfolds chronologically by decades. The evolution of fashion is traced through new designers, models and poses. The freshness of Penn’s vision never falters through almost seven decades. […]
His iconic portraits gave us Yves Saint Laurent hiding all but one eye; a tetchy Picasso, who arrived in a sweatshirt 'like a high-school basketball coach,' in Penn’s words; an uncomfortably perched Jean Cocteau (perhaps a reference to his book 'La Difficulté d’Être'); a lolling Christian Dior and a cornered Elsa Schiaparelli. [...]
