Nobody puts Baby in a corner! But Irving Penn did, seemingly, just about everyone else.
I stumbled across a Spencer Tracy biography the other day. On its cover is a photograph of Spence, left hand in his pocket and the right in front of his mouth, elbow held high, as he leans into an unusually severe corner. Right away, I was struck by its similarity to a famous portrait of Igor Stravinsky.
A brief search yielded Stravinsky, with legs crossed casually, hand held to a cocked ear. It wasn’t necessary to examine the two side by side. Unmistakably, it was the work of same photographer. The discovery spurred me to find out more about Irving Penn.
Penn, born in Plainfield, NJ, in 1917, attended the Philadelphia Museum and School of Industrial Art – now the University of the Arts – from 1934 to 1938. There he studied drawing, painting, graphics, and industrial arts under Alexey Brodovitch. Brodovitch was art director at Harper’s Bazaar. He proved to be a good contact. Harper’s was publishing Penn’s work before he even graduated.
Penn worked for a time as a freelancer, then succeeded Brodovitch as art director at Saks Fifth Avenue. Then he took off for a year to paint and take photographs in Mexico and across the U.S. When he returned to New York, he received an offer to join the art department of Vogue magazine. Before long, his photographs began to appear on the cover.
During World War II, he was courted by the Office of War Information in London, but decided to volunteer for the American Field Service instead. His assignments took him to Italy and India. He drove an ambulance, and he took more photos.
Throughout his career, he continued to contribute covers, portraits, still lifes, fashion photography, and photographic essays to Vogue. He also founded his own studio.
In 1948, he began to invite famous subjects to that studio, where they would be photographed in an acute corner formed of two flats. He made portraits of writers, artists, athletes, dancers, actors, political figures, and socialites. Of course, what I find most interesting are the musicians.
In addition to Stravinsky, there was Duke Ellington, Jascha Heifetz, Arthur Rubinstein, Yehudi Menuhin, Vittorio Rieti (with George Balanchine), Louis Armstrong, Noel Coward, Kay Thompson and the Williams Brothers (including Andy), and Maurice Chevalier.
Irving photographed more than just these, of course. But these are the ones he put in a corner, Baby.
Penn portraits: Speak-no-evil (Tracy) and Hear-no-evil (Stravinsky)
