Irving Penn

Irving Penn

(June 16, 1917 – October 7, 2009) was an American photographer  Penn's repertoire also includes portraits of creative greats; ethnographic photographs from around the world; modernist still lifes of food, bones, bottles, metal, and found objects; and photographic travel essays. His work has been exhibited internationally and continues to inform the art of photography. Born into a Russian Jewish family, in which he attended Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art (now the University of the Arts) from 1934 to 1938, where he studied drawing, painting, graphics, and industrial arts under Alexey Brodovitch.  Penn was among the first photographers to pose subjects against a simple grey or white backdrop and he effectively used this simplicity. Expanding his austere studio surroundings, Penn constructed a set of upright angled backdrops, to form a stark, acute corner.      




Contract Sheet

This photoshoot I did was inspired by the artist Irving Penn. The shoot was portrait, only focusing on the models face. The main focus of this shoot was to capture the imperfections such as freckles which are characteristics women often cover up as they are seen as ''flaws'' This lead me to go down the route of looking into women's makeup and their ''imperfections.'' 

To edit this, firstly I adjusted the levels and changed it to black and white; seen in the first picture. The next photo I did the previous steps and then adjusted the shadows and highlights, creating tone and depth within the photo. For this photo, the model already had freckles, but I added more to replicate the artists picture. I liked how the freckles became more prominent with the black and white effect and the increase of shadows which create lighter and darker aspects to the image.