Great Black and White Photographers PART 2

Irving Penn

        Biography 

From my previous post, Great and White Photographers Irving Penn is my favorite photographer. He was born June 16, 1917 in Plainfield, New Jersey. His younger brother is Arthur Penn, a film director and producer. Irving Penn attended the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art. It is now known as University of Arts. He attended that school from 1934 to 1938. He studied drawing, painting, graphics, and industrial arts under Alexey Brodovich. He worked for Alexey Brodovich at Harper's Bazaar. Many of Irving Penn's painting were published there. For two years after graduating, he worked as a freelance designer. Then he took Brodovich's position as the art director at Saks Fifth Avenue. He was the art director for a year, then he left for a year to work on painting and photographs in Mexico and across the U.S. After that, he returned to New York, where Alexander Liberman offered him a position as an associate in the Vogue magazine Art Department. He worked there, until Liberman asked him to try photography for the magazine. He worked at Vogue until the 1950's, the he founded his own studio in New York and began making advertising photographs. He met his wife, Lisa Fonssagrives, at a photo shoot in 1947. In 1950, they got married. Two years after that their son, Tom Penn. Lisa died in 1992. Irving Penn died at age, 92 on October 7, 2009 at his home in Manhattan.