Photographs in Platinum Metals

lrving Penn

Irving Penn: Photographs in Platinum Metals, is an exhibition comprised of 80 large format photographs created between the years 1947 and 1975 by one of the major figures of contemporary photography.

These photographs are on loan from the Marlborough Gallery, New York, New York, and are traveling on a national tour under the auspices of the Western Association of Art Museums, San Francisco, CA.

For many years, Irving Penn's work for commercial magazines has been well-known in the United States and abroad. Less known is that for approximately the past 15 years, he has been working privately in his own studio creating large photographic prints on paper, which he coats himself in platinum metals. His work was first exhibited in 1975 in two major museum one-man exhibitions, at the Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Turin, Italy, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. John Szarkowski, in his introduction to the MOMA exhibition, wrote, “It might therefore seem that the new pictures represent a break with Penn's work of the past, but it is more likely that they represent a further advance —in terms of a richer medium and a more appropriate iconography--towards the goal that Penn has pursued throughout his career: a perfect poised and self-sufficient photograph."

"The platinum print, with its exceptional richness and subtlety of scale and surface, was a favorite medium for photographers who pursued this goal, but perhaps no earlier master exploited these potentials with the breathtaking skiII evident in these prints by Penn."

Almost one-third of this stunning exhibition is composed of Penn's most recent "personal" work, his found objects from the city streets, crumpled cigarette butts, flattened paper cups, dirty gloves and other trash that were the basis of his recent retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York. The common materials are treated with the same richness and formality characteristic of Penn's noted celebrity portraits, nudes, common folk and primitive people, which are also welI-represented in this exhibition. As a result, the viewer can be drawn into fulI appreciation of the photographs' Iight and tactile values, regardless of subject matter.

lrving Penn was born in PlainviIle, New Jersey, in 1917. He studied design at the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art. In 1938 - 39, his drawings appeared in Harper's Bazaar. He spent 1942 painting in Mexico, only to discover that paint was not his preferred medium. In 1943, Penn joined the staff of Vogue Magazine, and at the suggestion of and close collaboration with his art director, Penn became a photographer. This productive relationship has continued to the present.

Two books devoted exclusively to Irving Penn's photographs have been published. His photographic work is represented in a number of major museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and George Eastman House, Rochester, New York.