Irving Penn’s Rythm

I was at the MOMA last night.  I was there specifically looking at Lartigue’s car racing image, which I’d never seen before in person,

lartigue-1.jpg
photo: “Papa at 80km/hour” by Jacques-Henri Lartigue

when I began a conversation with two gentleman standing next to me trying to understand what was happening in the image, or why it was distorted. I explained to them how the horizontal shutters on old Graflex Reflex cameras worked, and the effect it would have in regards to panning.

I then moved on. These two men remaining next to me, talking, I guess not having the appreciation of solitude as I do in such a place. They thanked me for explaining the Graflex and were very genial, but then amazingly almost instantly began to inquire about whether I only shot film (since I had a camera slung around my neck), whether I used Photoshop and etc etc. At this point I was standing in front of Irving Penn’s photo of a woman in bed on the telephone.

irving_penn_girlonphone.jpg
photo: © Irving Penn

Now I’ve never loved Penn, appreciated yes, greatly, but I’ve never really been able to get past a certain surface level in his work. So I stood, looking at this print, while these two gentleman standing to my side began talking about how amazing and powerful Photoshop is. I would not deny them this, but at the same time I cared so little and became so bored with the topic that my eyes began to fog over. Then, right then, I fell in love with Penn.

Sometimes if you look at a photograph without focusing on minutia, and allow yourself to stop thinking and blur into the image, so to speak, it will have entirely separate affects. This happened at this juncture with Penn and I, thanks to these gentleman. I saw that Penn had in some ways managed to transcend the subject into a perfect form, rhythm, line.  A perfect photograph.  Refined and immensely creative, the photograph literally becomes the content itself.  Whatever is actually in the photograph, in this case a woman in a bed, almost becomes incidental.  She’s but a building block to an act of, well, attempted perfection.

Brilliant, really.

penn-woman1.jpg
photo: © Irving Penn

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photo: © Irving Penn

01_irvingpenn-thumb_202_269.jpg
photo: © Irving Penn

Comments
5 Responses to “Irving Penn’s Rythm”
  1. Dyck Whitfield says:

    These are beautiful.

  2. i dream of a day when no one will ask or care to ask “do you shoot digital or film?” DuChamp felt that the aesthetic worth of any object observed was of little artistic value and that chance (the recognition of the pure now) was what an artist was always looking for, (fleeting and elusive) … it is beautiful to gaze at the work of an artist who can surprise us with something genuine ….

  3. sharon jefferson says:

    i think these photos are very lovely, but a lot more male nudity is needed in ALL of these images.

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