BEHIND THE LENS OF ANTON CORBIJN

This article is written by LILIANA RODRIGUES at THE HUFFINGTON POST

Dutch photographer and film director ANTON CORBIJN once declared his interest in portraying the pain of creation. Devoted to some of the most renowned living artists, his recent black and white series features painters, musicians and a moving portrait of NELSON MANDELA.

Combining austerity and aesthetic qualities, these black and white prints strike us for the way they capture the geniality of the portrayed. In a quiet but fascinating way, these apparently spontaneous but perfect shots speak to us about the act of creation.

These photographs reveal Mr. Corbijn’s affectionate and attentive look, his sense of amazement and his identification with others.

Despite stylization, his photographs display a strange closeness and a sense of intimacy. Seemingly naked, the strength of these pictures comes from the accidental as well as the intentional, which coexist in the process of their making.

Strongly indebted to minimalism (as evident in the photograph of Gerard Richter), Mr. Corbin’s vocabulary is bare, almost verging into silence. Bringing up a sense of wonder for the creative process of others, and a look into its shattering dilemmas, his new series of pictures confirms this photographer’s faith and pleasure as an artist himself.

I had a chance to sit down with ANTON CORBIJN for a frank conversation about his work and process.

LILIANA RODRIGUES: You have been working as a photographer since 1972. What are your thoughts when you look back at some of your photographs that have become iconic?

ANTON CORBIJN: My first pictures are from 1972 and my first proper camera dates back to 1973. During the first year I used my father’s camera. It had a flash on it, which I don’t like, but I didn’t know anything about photography back then, so it was just what I did.

Then I worked during my school’s holidays at a factory and was able to buy my own camera with my own money. It was weird. I think I was lucky that in the seventies I lived in a small place in Holland so no one noticed all my mistakes. I published sometimes and I probably made a lot of mistakes, but I was able to learn while photographing.

In the mid 70s until the late 70s, I started to make some pictures that I felt OK with. They corresponded to what I had in mind though I still felt that I couldn’t quite get it. The Memphis Slim photo was around 1973. This is one of my favourite pictures from that early period.

And from 1976 onwards while in Holland I got STEELY DAN, RY COODER, JACK BRUCE, ELVIS COSTELLO and JOHN MARTYN. I started to get some pictures that portrayed what I had in mind, but people didn’t like them.

There was no great reaction to the work. Although I really didn’t know anything about photography, I felt with these pictures – when I printed them – that there was something special about them. I sensed that these were pictures that could last longer than people realized at the time. I really felt that they would last and move beyond the popularity of the person in them.

They were separate from the subject’s fame. They became something else and I think that was what I was looking for. I slowly started to get images now and then that functioned in this way.

In 1979 I moved to England and photographed JOY DIVISION, DAVID BOWIE and CAPTAIN BEEFHEART. At that time I got images that I felt had that special, well – power is a big word to say – more like intimacy and ambition that outlasted the photo shoot. I felt that they would have a longer life.

LR: Some of these photographs have became a part of history and the way we remember things, such as the JOY DIVISION photograph. Do you feel a responsibility for the way things will be remembered?

AC: I feel a responsibility to myself…and not so much for the world at large.

Because of my Calvinistic upbringing, I was trained to think that what you do has to have a purpose. Taking pictures that only satisfy an editorial would mean that they have no value beyond that. I felt that I would be letting myself down if I did that, because I always thought I was making something that had a reason to exist. Otherwise it would be a waste of energy.

LR: You are often misunderstood and quickly labelled as a rock photographer. Do you feel that the celebrity status of the people you have photographed over the years has stood in the way of your being accepted by the art world?

For example, RICHARD AVEDON’S portraits helped define our age of celebrity and are a part of it as well. But he also looked into subjects who are not famous. In the early 80s he traveled through the American West and took pictures of young people, workers and drifters.

AC: That is more the perception of the media than the art world – although in England it is different.

In a lot of countries my work has gone beyond that. And even in your question I detect that you think that I am photographing celebrities, but I don’t think I do.

I photograph artists and some of them are very well known but if you ask the average person on the street: Do you like Anselm Kiefer? They would stare at you with a blank stare because these are not celebrities.

They are celebrated in a specific circle. But I am not really shooting a lot of Madonna or Paris Hilton or any of these big celebrities. People like BONO are big celebrities now but were not when I started working with them. Celebrity status was not why I photographed him.

So I hope that people look beyond this issue and look at the fact that I photograph people I find interesting. And that is why I moved towards painters because I find them incredibly interesting. And whether I sell these pictures, or people publish them, is something else. I just wanted to make photographs of people I wanted to meet and wanted to do something in photography with them.

When you mention RICHARD AVEDON who did the American West…funny, I find the TOM WAITS picture slightly reminiscent of some of his pictures. Don’t you think so?

LR: Yes, I do. Since there is a certain earnestness and intensity…

AC: Yeah, he looks like a drifter. Also the background. It is one of my favourite series by Avedon because I am not such a big fan of fashion and that seemed to be a very different way of photographing people.

LR: Wonder and closeness seem to be important aspects in your photography as well as in your films. I am thinking about your emotional relationship to JOY DIVISION and IAN CURTIS in CONTROL, the closeups and the intensive way you film GEORGE CLOONEY in THE AMERICAN and the fact that almost all your photography is frontal.

I wonder about your recent journey into film. Is this how you stay curious about the creative process? Is it a way of reinventing yourself as an artist?

AC: These are two different types of curiosity because my photography is not so much about people and film but is more about stories. So they are different things. Yes, this may be my way of reinventing myself. But I also try to challenge myself in photography all the time. I do different things, stay with it for a while, but then change it again.

It is just that in film there seems to be a far bigger change by the very nature of filming than within my photography. In a way, I always think that the period that I am shooting now is my fifth period and that it is going back to the basics again. There were four periods before that and they were all connected. They were all around the same subject matter, but the approaches vary.

Some photographs were documentary like, others portraiture like. The black and white ones were almost documentary like.

And the lithprints [a photographic print developed in lith developer that was baptised by ANTON as a lithprint. This special B/W paper is no longer made] were about portraits. These partly inspired the photo shoots for the self portraits series, which were the last version from that specific inspiration. Whereas the paparazzi ones, 33 STILL LIVES, were a commentary on the world of celebrity.

Once I finished that, I went on to see what I wanted with my photography, as my initial curiosity for this as well as for music was kind of finished. Now I am back working as a portrait photographer again since I like the routine and the language of it.

You try to meet the person whose work you admire and take a photograph. It is a very basic thing, to go out with a camera and meet somebody through it and take pictures. I think that is what I like in my photography.

In that way and since I started doing film, I have become very attracted to photography again – because in film it is such a different energy and a far more complex way of creating the work, that it becomes really appealing to go back to the very simple art of photography.

LR: For the stripping girls project, which you created with painter Marlene Dumas, you were acting on some premises which remain true for your work ever since. You repeatedly stated that you neither wanted to create documentary nor glamorous images.

What choice is there in between these genres? And what is the importance of this alternative way of seeing?

AC: Well, it is almost like an arranged reality. So the approach is almost a documentary one…and yet it is not. I always arrange something in order to make a better photograph and so I can have more influence on what happens in front of my camera.

LR: Avedon once said: “Photography is always a lie – even if an accurate one.”

Your photographs exude a certain quietness, beauty and intensity which makes them outstanding in my opinion.

Thank you for the interview.

PHOTOGRAPHY: ALFRED STIEGLITZ EXHIBITION AT THE SEAPORT MUSEUM

FROM THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

A new exhibition of photographs by ALFRED STIEGLITZ offers a view of New York City at the turn of the 20th century through the eyes of one of the world’s most celebrated photographers.

ALFRED STIEGLITZ NEW YORK at the Seaport Museum (in NYC) features 39 vintage photographs, many shot from the windows of his midtown Manhattan apartment and galleries. It opens today and runs through JANUARY 19, 2011.

It is the first time these works are being shown together since 1932 when ALFRED STIEGLITZ showed them at AN AMERICAN PLACE, a gallery he operated from 1929 until his death in 1946, said the exhibition curator Bonnie Yochelson.

The photographs cover the periods from 1893 to 1916 and 1930 to 1935, contrasting the photographer’s images of Old New York with later images of the city as it emerged as a great metropolis.

ALFRED STIEGLITZ, whose second wife was the famous artist GEORGIA O’KEEFFE, was a strong proponent of photography as an art form and founded the Photo Secession group to promote photography as a distinctive medium of individual expression.

His first gallery 291, which he ran from 1905 to 1917, also introduced to the United States such European painters as HENRI MATISSE, PABLO PICASSO, PAUL CEZANNE and AUGUSTE RODIN.

Assembled from the collections of about a dozen major American museums and individuals, the Seaport Museum photographs include ALFRED STIEGLITZ’S iconic print of the FLATIRON BUILDING near Madison Square Park. The soft focus, misty print was taken on a snowy night and like many of his images, it has the quality of a painting.

Another print, THE TERMINAL, depicts another wintry scene of a horse drawn omnibus on a slushy street in front of the old Post Office in the city’s financial district.

The exhibition features three platinum prints, taken in 1915 from the back window of 291.

“My reading of these pictures is that they’re in a certain way self portraits, that he’s always looking for ways to express his inner state of mind…and when he settled on these window views — which were not of famous buildings like the Flatiron — that was really when he found his New York, his way of expressing the city,” Bonnie Yochelson said.

The three images show the same view — townhouses and commercial loft buildings — at different times of day and in different seasons.

Highlighting the museum’s seaport theme, the exhibition features THE FERRY, a moody, dark picture of a ferry boat near Cortlandt Street in lower Manhattan, one of a series of harbour pictures, all taken by ALFRED STIEGLITZ in 1910.

A separate gallery contains a small presentation of his lantern slides, the precursor of the old fashioned slide carousel, that never have been shown before. The slides, scanned by the museum from originals, were used by members of The Camera Club Of New York, of which ALFRED STIEGLITZ was a member, to show each other their latest work.

“He loved the medium. He thought it was beautiful to have these translucent projected images,” Bonnie Yochelson stated.

The third and last gallery of the exhibition is called THE FACE OF NEW YORK. It contrasts ALFRED STIEGLITZ’S personal vision with a variety of material by other artists to show the wide variety of imagery of New York that was developing during his time.

“It’s meant to give this sort of high temple of art feeling, which was his view of himself and his work, with the kind of hustle bustle dynamic imagery and feeling of the city which was showing up by others,” Bonnie Yochelson commented.

ON LINE:

www.seany.org/stieglitz

RARE BEATLES PHOTOGRAPHS SURFACE IN NEW YORK

This article is authored by CHRIS BARTH of ROLLING STONE

More than 45 years after THE BEATLES first hit American soil, photos from their 1964 inaugural North American tour have arrived at New York’s MORRISON HOTEL GALLERY.

The snapshots, by late photographer Curt Gunther, reveal the band in lighthearted situations — riding horses, goofing off with manager Brian Epstein — and capture the fervour of young fans during the British Invasion. It’s a candid look at a band on the rise. But the photos almost didn’t see the light of day.

You can see some of them here

Steve Gunther was entrusted with his father’s 35mm Tri X negatives over 25 years ago with the lone instructions: “Fix these.”

The task of separating the negatives was an arduous one that took him nearly two months to complete. But his attention was divided between restoring his father’s work and his own photography.

“[The negatives] had been sitting in my Halliburton briefcase in my closet for years and years and years,” he admitted somewhat sheepishly.

It wasn’t until he connected with PETER BLACHLEY, cofounder of THE MORRISON HOTEL GALLERY (so called because another cofounder HENRY DILTZ photographed the cover of THE DOORS album of the same name), that STEVE GUNTHER decided to exhibit the photos.

“I had seen Curt’s work in the book Mania Days and I was blown away by the photographs,” commented Peter Blachley.

“I knew about this archive for quite some time.”

The photographs capture THE FAB FOUR from an intimate viewpoint, indicative of the relationship Curt Gunther established with the band while on tour.

“I think there was real, genuine affection between The Beatles and my dad,” Steve Gunther stated.

“He was there on every plane ride and in every hotel room.”

It was a coup of sorts to even photograph the band on tour — CURT GUNTHER’S involvement came only at the last minute urging of THE BEATLES’ press officer DEREK TAYLOR…and against the wishes of BRIAN EPSTEIN.

Even after joining the group’s entourage, Curt Gunther was unpaid, finding himself scraping by with a band not yet aware of the enormity of their following.

“As the folklore goes,” said Steve Gunther, “he made that month’s salary by playing poker every night and beating The Beatles. It wasn’t Meet The Beatles,” he added with a smile, “it was Beat The Beatles.”

Peter Blachley said that the collection proves that Curt had become part of the team.

“You can see it in the photographs. There were no handlers. Just, ‘Hang out, you’re one of the band now.’ ”

That proximity shows in the shots, which catch JOHN, PAUL, GEORGE and RINGO both on and off stage.

In one of the more stirring images, JOHN LENNON lies on a hotel bed, dressed in a striped shirt and hat and looking into the lens.

In another, JOHN and GEORGE strum guitars face to face in a backstage shower, seemingly mid conversation. The shots are a connection to a more innocent time, the work of an unrestricted photographer admiring other artists and friends.

“I think there is the same sort of passion that’s found in the photography that’s found in the music,” Peter Blachley remarked.

“People see the photograph and it relates back to them in that kind of a way. They want to preserve what you see in these photographs and feel that emotional connection to what these photographs represent in their lives.”

THE LASTING LEGACY OF HENRI CARTIER BRESSON

This article is authored by JESSE KORNBLUTH at THE HUFFINGTON POST

HENRI CARTIER BRESSON: THE MODERN CENTURY – a massive show of range and vision – closes JUNE 28 in New York.

If you can’t see it there, the Cartier Bresson exhibit moves on to THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO (JULY 24 to OCTOBER 3), THE SAN FRANCISCO MUSEUM OF MODERN ART (OCTOBER 30 to JANUARY 30) and THE HIGH MUSEUM OF ART in Atlanta (FEBRUARY 19 to MAY 15).

HENRI CARTIER BRESSON (1908-2004) was to photography what the Impressionists were to painting.

Those breakthrough artists grasped that the latest innovation in technology – premixed paints packaged in tubes – allowed them to go outside their studios and chronicle the life they found there. In much the same way, HENRI CARTIER BRESSON rejected the heavy studio based camera, covered the shiny lens of a lightweight Nikon with black tape so his subjects would be less inclined to notice him and took to the streets.

What he invented there was – essentially – photojournalism.

He shot and shot and shot some more, looking for the decisive moment that revealed its subject and maybe much more. When he found it, he turned his film over to the lab – he had no interest in printing, less in cropping.

The show includes his revealing portraits of Sartre, de Beauvoir, Camus, Picasso, Colette, Matisse, Pound and Giacometti.

But the decisive moment did not necessarily mean photographing personages and celebrities. In 1937, he was assigned to shoot the coronation of King George VI. He took not a single shot of the King. His subjects? The King’s subjects, who filled the streets to cheer their new monarch.

His photographs of civilians are body blows. Look at the picture on the cover of HENRI CARTIER BRESSON: THE MODERN CENTURY – a mother and son reunion at the end of World War II. Kids playing games amidst rubble. The denunciation of a woman accused of collaborating with the Germans. Mourners during the Algerian conflict.

For 30 years, he was everywhere. In Shanghai, during a run on the banks. In India, to take some of the last pictures of Gandhi – and, from close up, his funeral pyre.

What especially dazzles is the clarity of his images. Women on a hilltop in Pakistan in 1949 hold their hands in prayer, their feet echoing the line of the distant mountains. A bicyclist makes a turn at the bottom of a curving staircase. A man slips over a puddle, his image reflected in the water.

Simple stuff.

An eight year old can grasp the ideas and be excited by them. And adults can have their visual palettes refreshed, the better to see, as HENRI CARTIER BRESSON did, eternity in an instant.

MOMA: IN CELEBRATION OF FEMALE PHOTOGRAPHERS

FROM THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART’S photography collection is so rich that it can present virtually the entire history of the medium using only images taken by women and, in many cases, of women.

It’s instructive to realize that whatever genre or style in which men worked – even industrial photography – women were doing the same.

The show is organized chronologically, beginning with a gallery of 19th and early 20th century photographs that illustrate the two traditions of documentary and pictorial photography.

The most compelling in the first category is a series of photos taken by FRANCES BENJAMIN JOHNSTON at the all black Hampton Institute (which is now Hampton University).

The show continues with a stunning array of photographs by European artists in the 1920s and 1930s, including ILSE BING’S 1931 SELF PORTRAIT IN MIRRORS. It shows her looking straight at the viewer and in profile simultaneously, an illusion made possible by using her camera as a third eye.

And since the art world seems to be having a Picasso moment – with major shows in museums and galleries and the record breaking sale of one of his paintings at auction – be sure to look at an untitled work from 1930 by Picasso’s lover and muse DORA MAAR, a highly regarded artist in her own right.

It shows a woman photographed from the back with her long black coat lifted up in the wind.

You’ll also want to spend time in front of two prints by French photographer GERMAINE KRULL, whose beautifully composed images of urban landscapes show that women could do muscular photographs of architectural structures as well as any man.

Although DOROTHEA LANGE is among the best known U.S. photographers – male or female. The curators have rightly devoted an entire wall to almost twenty of her photographs. All of the subjects are girls and women.

They range from her iconic Depression era picture MIGRANT MOTHER, NIPOMO, CALIFORNIA to the poignant image of Japanese American children saying the pledge of allegiance soon after President Roosevelt ordered the relocation of 120,000 Japanese Americans into grim camps in the west.

The mid to late 20th century is represented by MOMA’S newly acquired colour photographs of New York street life by HELEN LEVITT, best known for her work in black and white and uncomfortable but affecting images by Austrian born LISETTE MODEL and DIANE ARBUS.

The sixth gallery of the exhibition will close on AUGUST 30 and the other five will remain on view through next MARCH.

It will not travel.

ON THE NET:

MOMA.ORG

HENRI CARTIER BRESSON PHOTOGRAPHY RETROSPECTIVE IN NYC

FROM THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Born in 1908, the great French photographer HENRI CARTIER BRESSON came of age when small, hand held cameras were giving artists and adventurers unprecedented access to the entire world.

He began to travel at age 22 and didn’t stop for nearly half a century, always with camera in hand.

Now the MUSEUM OF MODERN ART – which like the man himself did so much to define visual art in the 20th century – has launched a major retrospective of six decades of work by a personality whom curator PETER GALASSI calls “one of the most talented photographers who ever lived.”

The exhibit – the first since his death in 2004 at age 95 – features 300 black and white prints from the years 1929 to 1989, a fifth of which have never been seen before by the public.

As a founder of the MAGNUM photo agency, HENRI CARTIER BRESSON made it a point to witness the epic events of the last century – among them, the liberation of the Nazi camps, the Communist revolution in China, Gandhi’s funeral. But the photojournalist always strove to do more than simply record the news.

PETER GALASSI noted how his photos reveal an attention to unfamiliar angles, extreme close ups and graphic patterns of light and shade. From the chaos around him, the photographer extracted timeless images of uncanny clarity – what he famously referred in his influential 1952 book as the decisive moment.

If you look at the 1948 Shanghai photo of people rushing to retrieve gold from a bank before the city falls to the Communists, you’ll understand much about the tumultuous conditions of the time.

The wide range of material is brilliantly organized into 13 largely thematic sections – although the thrills begin at the entrance to the exhibit, where the museum has blown up maps of the world and charted his journeys across the globe. Many of the original issues of LIFE, PARIS MATCH and other mass circulation picture magazines where his work first appeared are displayed in glass cases inside.

Despite HENRI CARTIER BRESSON’S access to people of power and influence, some of the most affecting images are his scenes of every day life beginning in the 1930s when, he later recalled, “I prowled the streets all day, feeling very strung up and ready to pounce, determined to trap life – to preserve life in the act of living.”

One image from that time was taken from the top of a stairway in Hyeres, France. It captures a bicyclist careering down a cobblestone street, the curve of the road echoed by a similar curve in the railing. As PETER GALASSI notes in the wall text, HENRI CARTIER BRESSON was a master of “turning the world into elegant patterns.”

Although he was born into a wealthy family, he seemed at home on the street. One of his favourite tricks at large public gatherings was to ignore the main event to study the spectators – as in a well known photograph from 1937 of eccentric Londoners at the coronation of King George VI.

But he was also an accomplished portraitist, photographing some of the most celebrated artists and intellectuals of his day, a list that included GEORGE BALANCHINE, HENRI MATISSE and WILLIAM FAULKNER.

When sitters would ask how long the session would take, he would respond, “Longer than the dentist but shorter than the psychoanalyst.”

Several galleries feature photos that celebrate the timeless beauty of the landscape, from rice paddies in Indonesia to a row of plane trees in France receding to the horizon. He also lovingly records society’s age old rituals and customs, such as the famous image of boaters picnicking on a hillside overlooking the river where their boat is tied up.

But HENRI CARTIER BRESSON was neither sentimental nor nostalgic. Despite his clear affection for an older, fading way of life, the pictures also reveal how he unflinchingly embraced the modern century in all its sometimes mindless innovation and vulgarity.

His pictures from the 1960s document with great precision and humour the coming, cluttered consumer world of home appliances, hair dryers, supermarket signage and Club Med vacations.

One of the best things about this truly monumental show is the chance to see so many images that were previously unavailable to the public, thanks to a loan of 220 prints from the HENRI CARTIER BRESSON FOUNDATION in Paris. Although the negatives are now decades old, they still seem remarkably fresh and vital – a lasting tribute to the genius of the man who made them.

The show opens this Sunday and runs through JUNE 28.

ON THE NET:

MOMA.ORG

LEGENDARY PHOTOGRAPHER JIM MARSHALL PASSES AWAY AT 74

FROM ROLLING STONE

JIM MARSHALL, the photographer who captured some of rock & roll’s most unforgettable images – including photos of JIMI HENDRIX burning his guitar at Monterey Pop and JOHNNY CASH flipping the bird at San Quentin – died in his sleep last night in New York.

He was 74.

After starting as a professional photographer in 1959, JIM MARSHALL was given unparalleled access to rock’s biggest artists, including MILES DAVIS, BOB DYLAN, RAY CHARLES, THE WHO and THE ROLLING STONES.

He was the only photographer granted backstage access for THE BEATLES’ final full concert at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park in 1966. He also shot THE ROLLING STONES on their historic 1972 tour.

He developed special bonds with the artists he covered and those relationships helped him capture some of his most vivid and iconic imagery. In one of his last interviews, a chat with ROLLING STONE last October, he summed up his rapport with rock stars best when talking about JANIS JOPLIN.

“You could just call her at home and be like, ‘We have to take some pictures,’ and she’d say, ‘OK! Come over!’ She trusted me and knew I had her best interests at heart. I only wanted to make her look good.”

JIM MARSHALL was born in Chicago in 1936 and was raised in San Francisco. He purchased his first camera in high school and started documenting the artists and musicians in San Francisco’s burgeoning beat scene. After serving in the Air Force, he returned home, where he had a chance encounter with John Coltrane. When the jazz legend asked him for a lift, the photographer obliged. He returned the favour by allowing Mr. Marshall to shoot nine rolls of film.

Soon after, JIM MARSHALL moved to New York and was hired by ATLANTIC and COLUMBIA to shoot their artists at work in the studio, including BOB DYLAN and RAY CHARLES.

But when he returned to the San Francisco in the late Sixties he produced his most indelible work, taking hundreds of photographs of THE GRATEFUL DEAD, SANTANA, JANIS JOPLIN and JEFFERSON AIRPLANE.

He recalled one rare instance when he photographed an intensely intimate portrait of GRACE SLICK and JANIS — supposedly rivals at the time — at Ms. Slick’s home in 1967.

“All that shit about them being the fighting queen bees of rock & roll was bullshit,” he recalled.

“They got along really well but they had never been photographed together.”

Mr. Marshall continued to be prolific even late into his life. Most recently, he snapped portraits of everyone from LENNY KRAVITZ to VELVET REVOLVER.

He published five books, including 2009’s collection TRUST.

He had no children and was passionate about his work until the end.

“I have no kids. My photographs are my children.”

PHOTOGRAPHER IRVING PENN DIES AT 92

FROM THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

IRVING PENN, whose photographs revealed a taste for stark simplicity whether he was shooting celebrity portraits, fashion, still lifes or remote places of the world, died today at his Manhattan home.

He was 92.

His passing was announced by his photo assistant ROGER KRUEGER.

IRVING PENN, who constantly explored the photographic medium and its boundaries, typically preferred to isolate his subjects – from fashion models to Aborigine tribespeople – from their natural settings and photograph them in a studio against a stark background. He believed the studio could most closely capture their true natures.

Between 1964 and 1971, he completed seven such projects, his subjects ranging from New Guinea mud people to San Francisco hippies.

He also had a fascination with still life and produced a dramatic range of images that challenged the traditional idea of beauty, giving dignity to such subjects as decaying fruit and discarded clothing.

A 1977 show at the METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART presented prints of trash rescued from MANHATTAN streets and photographed lovingly against plain backgrounds.

“Photographing a cake can be art,” he said at the 1953 opening of his studio, where he continued to produce commercial and gallery work into the 21st century.

IRVING PENN’S career began in the 1940s as a fashion photographer for VOGUE – and he continued to contribute to the magazine for decades thereafter.

He stumbled into the job almost by accident, when he abandoned his early ambition to become a painter and took a position as a designer in the magazine’s art department in 1943. Staff photographers balked at his unorthodox layout ideas and a supervisor asked him to photograph a cover design.

The resulting image, on the OCTOBER 1, 1943 cover of VOGUE, was a striking still life showing a brown leather bag, a beige scarf, gloves and oranges and lemons arranged in the shape of a pyramid.

In subsequent photographs for the magazine, IRVING PENN further developed his austere style that placed models and fashion accessories against clean backdrops. It was a radical departure at a time when most fashion photographers posed their subjects with props and in busy settings that tended to draw attention from the clothes themselves.

The approach made him a star at the magazine, where his work eventually appeared on as many as 300 pages annually. IRVING PENN believed his success depended on keeping the reader – rather than the model – in mind.

“Many photographers feel their client is the subject,” he explained in a 1991 interview in THE NEW YORK TIMES.

“My client is a woman in Kansas who reads Vogue. I’m trying to intrigue, stimulate, feed her…The severe portrait that is not the greatest joy in the world to the subject may be enormously interesting to the reader.”

He left the magazine in 1944 to join the military – serving with the American Field Service in Italy and then as a photographer in India – but returned to VOGUE in 1946, taking travel assignments in addition to his fashion work.

He relished the chance to work in foreign locales, recalling in his 1974 book WORLDS IN A SMALL ROOM that he had often daydreamed “of being mysteriously deposited (with my ideal north light studio) among the Aborigines in remote parts of the earth.”

In the 1950s, he moved into portraiture. He photographed not only the famous – actors, musicians and politicians – but also ordinary people. He published a series of pictures throughout 1950 and 1951 featuring plumbers, salespeople and cleaning personnel in New York City, Paris and London.

THE GETTY CENTER in Los Angeles currently is exhibiting some of the photos.

His celebrity portraits included closely cropped images of GEORGIA O’KEEFFE, SPENCER TRACY and PABLO PICASSO, the last peering apprehensively from beneath a wide brimmed hat. IRVING PENN once said that his formula for capturing meaningful portraits was to photograph his subjects relentlessly, often over a period of several hours, until they were forced to let down their guard.

A 2000 exhibit organized by THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO on his portraiture work said, “His manipulation of formal design elements such as light and shadow and his ability to capture a significant gesture, expression, or mood, ultimately reveal something intriguing about his subjects.”

“A beautiful print is a thing in itself, not just a halfway house on the way to the page,” Mr. Penn remarked.

Accordingly, he spent countless hours in his studio creating prints with costly platinum salts – a process that had been mostly abandoned at the turn of the 20th century, but favoured by him because of its glowing results.

(Most photographic prints use a solution of silver on the paper rather than platinum.) He would paint the platinum solution on the paper himself to create the effects he sought.

“Over the years I must have spent thousands of hours silently brushing on the liquid coatings, preparing each sheet in anticipation of reaching the perfect print,” he wrote in his 1991 book PASSAGE: A WORK RECORD.

IRVING PENN donated photographs to the NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY and the NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART in Washington and his archives are at THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO.

Born in Plainfield, N.J. in 1917, IRVING PENN studied at the PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM SCHOOL OF INDUSTRIAL ART from 1934 to 1938 and worked as an assistant at HARPER’S BAZAAR in 1939.

He married fashion model LISA FONSSAGRIVES in 1950 and for decades afterward she remained one of his favourite subjects. She died in 1992. One of his 1950 photos of her sold at auction in 2004 for more than $57,000.

IRVING PENN was the older brother of filmmaker ARTHUR PENN, who directed BONNIE & CLYDE, THE MIRACLE WORKER and THE CHASE.

He had a son TOM with Ms. Fonssagrives. His wife also had a daughter MIA from a previous marriage.