Irving Penn launched a revolution in commercial photography from the unlikely foothold of eggs and chicks nested in a jar.
He photographed them in Mexico in 1942 with a signature style of light and form that he would develop at Vogue magazine upon his return to New York in 1943. Within the next 10 years, he brushed aside the polite conventions of socialite poses for fashion photography and the Mt. Olympus reverence for celebrity subjects. He isolated top models, glitterati, European tradesmen and New Guinea mud men in studio settingsthe better to photograph one and all with the blunt scrutiny of a photojournalist and the lyric artistry of a poet.
“Out of the eggs in that jar his whole vision is being hatched. The light and the chicks isolated in a luminous white spacehe’s inventing his space,” says Colin Westerbeck, curator of “Irving Penn: A Career in Photography, ” opening Saturday at the Art Institute of Chicago. The 150-print exhibit, scheduled for international tour, includes 134 prints Penn has given to the museum along with his lifetime archive of letters, papers and studio diaries. At 80, Penn continues to photograph Vogue shoots, advertising assignments and still-life projects.
Penn’s portraits document the 20th Century as an extended family of individuals peering from beyond the celebrity masks of one culture or the exotic ethnic traditions of another. The exhibit also includes fashion, nudes, landscapes and sculptural still lifes that often gave New York street trash a resurrection as abstract art.
Through it all, Penn upturned photographic conventions. He choreographed human form to the point of statuesque perfection and then burst the fantasy bubble by showing the edges of a backdrop. He even threw in a telltale grit of carpet scraps or other debris, subtly linking his glamor worlds to life’s gritty, earthy dance.
Still, Penn brought a purist’s discipline to every picture he photographed and documented every detail in the records now in his archive. Much of the archive is sealed until 15 years after Penn’s death but samplings of contact sheets, magazine tear sheets and other documents are included on exhibit through Feb. 1. Call 312-443-3600 for times and special programs associated with the exhibit.
