Still Life : Irving Penn Photographs, 1938-2000 [Hardcover]

Irving Penn (Author), John Szarkowski (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 7, 2001

Irving Penn is one of the leading photographers of the 20th century. His elegant and innovative photographs are the subject of this volume. It includes some 200 images.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

From early, career-establishing Vogue magazine work like The Spilled Handbag (Theatre Accident) of 1947 through his images of bones and other detritus (Bone Landscape, 1980) to his recent pictures of cuttlefish, Irving Penn has masterfully evinced the secret lives of objects. Ninety-eight of Penn's greatest images (45 color, 50 tritone, 3 duotone) are assembled in Still Life, a publication personally supervised by the artist. Still making funny, strange and lovely editorial photographs for Vogue and other magazines (an ant crawls on a melted Brie; a mannequin gazes out from under a bell jar), Penn also continues to experiment in his personal work: components of traditional still-life paintings like skulls, fish, paintbrushes and dice, for instance, arranged artfully and bizarrely, shot in black and white.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Penn is notable for gathering things in clumps and patterns and photographing them something he has been doing for 60 years. His boldness and bravado have led to a new notion of what constitutes a still life. This book, introduced by John Szarkowski, director emeritus of the department of photography at MOMA, does a very good job of revealing both Penn's lens and his psyche, which can be off-putting. Yes, it is possible to merge a perfect overhead view of a huge bumblebee and the perfectly sensual mouth of a well-lipsticked woman, but really who wants to see a big, menacing bee roaming on human teeth and lips? One expects that Penn will someday take his camera into the operating room and place something a Lego toy, handgun, or tarantula on a pancreas open for inspection during surgery. The artist seems to want us to think that because something exists, it looks pretty nifty when photographed with the skill used to make fashion magazines sizzle. Still, Penn is a camera master, yielding technically perfect images and tossing wet blankets at the common still life of fruit or flowers. The first book to focus exclusively on his still lifes, this will introduce Penn's art to new viewers. It gives photographers seeking new ways to work much to ponder. David Bryant, New Canaan Lib., CT
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 144 pages
• Publisher: Bulfinch (September 7, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0821227025
• ISBN-13: 978-0821227022
• Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 1 x 11.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #233,133 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars More for the Canon, August 29, 2001

By 

Geoffrey P. Smith "opusposthum" (ATLANTA, GA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Still Life : Irving Penn Photographs, 1938-2000 (Hardcover)

A great achievement by the publishers, Little Brown, who are demonstrating committment to Penn's work with terrific reproductions and presentations of his work in this and the previous book devoted to the photographer's collaborations with Issey Miyake. Penn's still life work is an intriguing mixture of idiosyncatic, almost hermetic 'personal' photographs and his magazine work, mostly for Vogue. The range of subjects in the former category is diverse, from street trash to minimalist steel block constructions to animal skulls. The latter is similarly diverse, within the confines of the editorial demands of a glossy magazine. Stated simply, no-one does it better. When Penn trains his mind and eyes on a subject, it is made uniquely his own. These are works to ponder, not only because of their formal beauty, but also for the larger implications of people, objects and their inherent transience. John Szarkowski contributes his usual eloquent and generous prose in this very desirable book. Highly recommended for fans of Irving Penn and fine photography, old and new.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars This is good but nothing new, October 9, 2001

By 

Ron Cowie - See all my reviews

This review is from: Still Life : Irving Penn Photographs, 1938-2000 (Hardcover)

Irving Penn is a great photographer and these images are wonderful. If you own other Irving Penn books, you probably have seen most of these. There's nothing wrong with mining old images and putting them in a book, but this is getting a little crazy.
Great images but if you have his other books, save you're money. If you want, you can buy me presents if the stuff is burning a hole in your pocket.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Classic Penn, June 9, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Still Life : Irving Penn Photographs, 1938-2000 (Hardcover)

Irving Penn has been making still life photographs for many decades, and this collection is a good representation of his work. Elegant black and white compositions of the 1940s, detailed groupings since the 1980s, and his in-your-face color that we see frequently in Vogue today, there is some of everything. My only complaint is this: I would like to see more of his ads for Clinique. Only two are reproduced here. There are hundreds more, and most are more interesting that the two selected for this book.