Irving Penn: imitated but never outdone

Lucy Davies Published: 11:44AM GMT twenty-three February 2010

Truman Capote, New York, 1948 by Irving Penn Photo: � THE IRVING PENN FOUNDATION

The lustrous, tonally abounding images that tumbled from American photographer Irving Penns camera tangible mural and conform photography for multiform generations. "I myself have regularly stood in astonishment of the camera," he once said. "I recognize it for the instrument it is square Stradivarius, square scalpel."

Among those advantageous sufficient to have stood in his college of music were most artists between them Picasso, Jasper Johns and Marc Chagall and writers such as Truman Capote and Philip Roth. His sold hallmark was an austere, solid backdrop fashioned in to a sort of corner, enclosing his theme and afterwards illuminated with the soft, glancing light that filtered by the filthy north-facing windows of his New York studio. The total, roughly surgical carry out he enjoyed over his art would den forcefully in to textures, sum and expressions, coaxing out the blemishes in a face, the fold in a shirtsleeve.

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An muster clinging to Penn, who died last year, has only non-stop at the National Portrait Gallery. Throughout his seven-decade career, he was mostly imitated, never bettered. We asked 7 viewable mural photographers to report what it is about Irving Penn that has finished him such a hulk of the genre.

Terry ONeill

Made his name with his Swinging Sixties portraits

When I initial became a photographer, I attempted to character my work on Eugene Smith, who was a great, good photojournalist. But afterwards I saw a design by Irving Penn and I was bowled over by the assent and serenity. I thought, "Christ you can roughly reach out and hold the person." I began to think, if ever I worked in a college of music I would similar to to turn similar to him.

Of course, once you begin operative you rise your own style. But he had a extensive change on my work. I try to get that calmness in my own portraiture. You cant unequivocally insist it, the only something your eye goes to and you wish to be similar to that.

Lord Snowdon

Has prisoner the critical and successful for 50 years

I cant think of a time when I didnt know Irving Penns photographs. Theyve regularly been with me. He was hugely important. He had a unequivocally simple, uncluttered style. It was chic, classical and never gimmicky. He was usual too. I contingency contend he was my hero.

Brigitte Lacombe

High conform and movie set photographer

Irving Penn was one of the couple of photographers that resisted the enticement to try everything, go everywhere and accept each tender that was offering to him. People who work in conform are regularly taken in by whatever is new, but he knew who he was and what his work was and what he indispensable to accomplish. Maybe he was self-centered. Not in a cocky approach but meaningful he had found his place early on. And he didnt need to be seduced by all else.

Im grateful he didnt stray. Plenty of people have, and they never unequivocally come back. I love his early portraits, when he was still operative with daylight.

William Selden

Former model, right afar shoots celebrities

Irving Penns striking morality has been a outrageous change on my own work. His portraits, similar to his conform and still-life photographs, are all about consultation importance. He approached a peeled apple or a cigarette finish with the same bend as he would Pablo Picasso or JFK.

He seemed to glory in the participation of dirt. In a small of his biggest portraits he acted his sitters on a nasty square of old carpet. Despite this, the people see impossibly dignified, and additionally settled, as if they have been sitting or station where they are for a small time. Neither they nor Penn appear in a precipitate to get the routine over with. Its roughly as if theyre being painted; as if time is washing over them.

Solve Sundsbo

Norwegian specialising in oppulance fashion

Penn was square of the Holy Trinity of photographers, to one side Helmut Newton and Richard Avedon. What they havent photographed isnt value photographing.

What creates Penn special is twofold. Firstly he was incredibly gifted and dedicated. Second, he was active for some-more than half a century. And the peculiarity never changed; we never thought ah, hes removing old. If anything he became some-more irritable towards the end: a small darker, a small some-more sinister. He was of the same description as Rembrandt. They were both on a everlasting query for quality. People will still see at Penns work in 200 years time.

I think he was the initial to frame all afar and have a solid background. It seems so viewable now, but it took someone with a unequivocally clever inventive prophesy to do it first. It was a quantum jump from the painterly work of the then-masters Edward Weston, Paul Strand and Edward Steichen. He took afar all that was old and that felt remaining in photography and marked down it down to the core. When you do that youre left with a small theatre to work on but he succeeded given he filled it with meaning.

As shortly as you begin seeking in to photography you encounter his work, and when you begin seeking at it, all you wish to do is duplicate it. He influences each photographer in the world. Anyone who says he doesnt, hasnt finished his homework. Every time I do an extraordinary square of work, and Im pleased, I think, "Hang on, havent I seen this before?" Then it hits me: Penns already finished it.

Bryan Adams

Singer incited snapper

Irving Penn is the photographer that all photographers admire. Some time after I took my initial portraits for British Vogue, I went to encounter him in New York. He unequivocally pleasantly took me by his college of music and showed me his old 10x8 cameras and one of his copy rooms. It was a impulse Ill never forget.

Everyone should see Penns prints given they are masterpieces of the time. His standards were second to none. Many of his black and whites were printed utilizing a gold process, involving excellent paper and steady printings of the disastrous on a singular piece that gave a intemperate tonal picture and abounding blacks. Its an art form couple of polished and that hardly exists these days.

Elliott Erwitt

Member of the prestigious Magnum group given 1953

Elegance, economy and qualification are the 3 difference that his work brings to mind. Everything he photographed with the difference of the cigarette butts, that I didnt caring for has a usual denominator; you know that it was him. That signature is something singular in a photographer. Somehow you regularly know the him.

"Irving Penn: Portraits is at the National Portrait Gallery, London WC2 (020 7306 0055), until Jun 6