**The Art of Meticulous Detail: A Conversation with Irving Penn**

Irving Penn was a photographer known for his extraordinary attention to detail and perfectionism. His work spanned over several decades, from his early days as an assistant at Harper's Bazaar to his later years as a renowned fashion photographer. One of the most fascinating aspects of Penn's career is the level of control he had over his work, which was unparalleled by many of his contemporaries.

I recall one anecdote that illustrates Penn's meticulous nature. He had to put a lemon in a photograph, and so they had to send 500 lemons for him to choose one. The joke was that it would take him 500 photographs to find the perfect lemon. This level of rigor and attention to detail was not unique to Penn, but rather a hallmark of his career. He was known to be demanding in his work, expecting nothing but perfection from himself and those around him.

My experience with Penn dates back to the early 1990s when I was curator at the American Art Museum at the Smithsonian. One evening, as I was leaving the museum, Penn invited me to review some of his earliest work. He had stored in boxes a selection of small square formats made from his first photographs, taken with a Rolleiflex camera as a young assistant at Harper's Bazaar. These early works showed Penn walking the streets of New York, capturing shop windows, curious signs, and other street scenes. It was clear that he was drawn to the city's energy and the stories it told.

Penn's relationship with fellow photographers is also worth noting. He was friends with Richard Avedon, who would later become a prominent figure in American photography. However, their friendship was also marked by a healthy dose of competition. When Diana Vreeland left Harper's Bazaar to become editor at Vogue, Penn and his colleague from Abaddon were pitted against each other. This period of time saw both photographers traveling the world, taking photographs for Vogue and other publications.

One of the most striking aspects of Penn's work is his ability to capture the essence of a subject. He was known to use the term "perversion" in reference to the notion that certain images could be considered poisonous – that is, they had the power to reveal hidden truths or to subvert expectations. This concept is evident in many of his photographs, particularly those featuring women and children.

The quality of the prints from Penn's work is also noteworthy. He was an exceptional printer, and his platinum palladium prints are a testament to his skill. Seeing these prints up close reveals the level of craftsmanship that went into creating them. The texture, tone, and overall presentation of the prints are all exemplary.

In recent years, I have had the opportunity to work with many talented photographers, but none have captured my attention quite like Irving Penn. His dedication to his craft is inspiring, and his work continues to be celebrated around the world. If you're a fan of photography, I highly recommend visiting the Dallas Museum of Art's current exhibition featuring Penn's work. The show is a must-see for anyone interested in the art of photography.

**The Exhibition: A Showcase of Irving Penn's Work**

The Dallas Museum of Art is currently hosting an exhibition dedicated to Irving Penn's work. This show features over 100 prints from Penn's extensive career, including many of his most famous images. The exhibition is a testament to Penn's skill and dedication as a photographer, and it is clear that he was a master of his craft.

If you're unable to visit the exhibition in person, be sure to check out my video documentation of the show. I filmed a behind-the-scenes look at the exhibition, including interviews with Mary and Sue Canterbury, who provided valuable insights into Penn's work. The video also includes close-ups of some of Penn's prints, which are truly stunning.

**A Special Thank You**

I would like to extend a special thank you to the Dallas Museum of Art for allowing me to film this documentary. I was thrilled to have the opportunity to showcase Penn's work in such an intimate way. I also want to thank Sue Canterbury for her participation and insight into Penn's life and work. Your expertise is invaluable, and I'm grateful to have had the chance to share your thoughts with our audience.

**Additional Resources**

For more information on Irving Penn's work, be sure to check out his official website or visit the Dallas Museum of Art to see the exhibition in person. You can also subscribe to my channel for future videos on art and photography. Don't forget to hit the like button and share this video with your friends and family.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enso when an exhibition opens at an art museum typically a few days before they hold an event that is called a press preview now the idea behind a press preview is to invite members of the press to come down to see the exhibition take images shoot video talk to curators and build stories around this that hopefully they will run in the media to promote the exhibition by the time it opens this morning is the press preview for Irving Penn's beyond beauty in Dallas and I've been invited and I've also been invited to bring you guys along with me so come on we're going to Dallas to see Irving Penn mostly though you would do the covers in color we have some wonderful except for one attended the first black-and-white photo cover that what I love about this image is it's one of those key images that is in a style that may not last very long for pen but yet it sweeps together a lot of things he had been thinking about and a lot of things that he would think about more and so it's a portrait it's a still life and it has that wonderful strain of surrealism and it was done for a magazine article about this active Margaret Sullavan was at the time one of the stars in Broadway and it was a new play that had just opened called the voice of the turtle where she plays this very curious and sexually precocious young girl and that's the theme of it and so what Penn has done in this picture totally styled by Penn is given us the elements of a surreal still life I mean what that hammer is doing not breaking the egg so we've got an egg and we've got a hammer and we've got some sort of medieval looking glass then we've got drawers that are partially open with stuff coming out of my mother but and but it's as a portrait it's kind of odd because she's not square in the center of it and in fact she seems to be hiding behind this other thing so she's somewhere in the middle ground but there's stuff going on in the background but he's also kind of revealed this studio set up he's gonna deconstruct at it right so it's not we sort of see how the parts were put together but she is kind of amazing for that time nobody did that so it's not something we see throughout them in the corner yes for classic deconstruction right so this is just a little before he starts those corner portraits so he's obviously playing with through flats in the studio to set it up and then it gives us other kinds of clues so there's a picture of a turtle in it voice of the turtle is the name of the play and we've got this little child drawing here and then even behind it is this some sort of bird on the wall pen love's by the way to put pictures into photographs as I mean they're like pictograph kinds of things so so here we have this deconstructed picture of portrait of Margaret Sullavan and it's got all of those elements and it just seems to be so provocative and it's that perversion that pen kind of loved to add into a picture of not making it perfect so right after this is when he begins those corner portraits where he just strips the studio bear puts those two flats together and makes people perform in them he ultimately abandons this as a style of working he said it was just way too complicated so way too complicated so let's just get the person and the flats and to see what happens having a background in graphic design and one of the things that I really think that separates Panda probably was behind much of the innovation we did is that a way of thinking like a designer conceptually using metaphor times using things like that was there anything you noticed about in knowing him just his way of thinking like that was he kind of a creative thinker what was he like I was a very creative thinker I think he was always sort of pushing let's say hey I'm not gonna say it was pushing the limits but what he did is he defined his style and then he pushed the the he pushed the the picture within the limits of that style so I think what you get is the power of resistance and as much as of just breaking free it's sort of this compression feeling that you get as part of his power he he was meticulous he was very analytical I think he he did a lot of preparatory sketches and won't call them real drawings with sketches laying out still life or a fashion shoot so he thought about it ahead of time it wasn't very spontaneous but he really thought what is the image that I want to what's the idea and how can I make that happen there are just wonderful notes from his longtime studio manager that exist in the archive of pens work at the Art Institute of Chicago a lot of written danger and all kinds of notes that she had and just a pen sort of like sending hats back not the right hat not the right hand not the right hand don't send a model with bangs I don't want bags in this picture he did all kinds of things I was extremely meticulous about yeah there was they're just wonderful anecdotal things such as he had to put a lemon in a in a photograph and so they had to send the the joke was that you had to get 500 lemons for him to choose one that he would take 500 photographs of so there's that kind of rigor and attention to detail but also a demand for perfection that met his standards you know I'm not sure that everybody who does that kind of work now gets the kind of control that a handful any weak woods even myself or Mario Testino yeah I mean they're they're designing it but you know I'm not sure that except at that level which gives us sentient Penn was at that level he was Penn indeed I was very fortunate to know mr. Penn I at first in an exhibition when I was curator at the American Art Museum at the Smithsonian in the early 90s and one of the things that's interesting about mr. Dennis once you know how you know it for a long time so it was one day I was there it was late the day and I was putting my coat on and mr. Penn said to me you might be interested in seeing these and when somebody like mr. Penn says you might be interested in seeing these you don't say gotta go take my coat off so he opened up box after box of what turns out to be now a selection in this exhibition of his very earliest work these small square formats made of the small Rolleiflex photographs that he made as a very first photographs as a young assistant from Lexi brought a at Harper's Bazaar when he got his first camera he began walking the streets of New York and making photographs mostly of shop windows of curious signs of things on the street he was for a real period of time a street photographer I think that they were friends but they were very competitive friends the competition really heated up when Diana Vreeland left Harper's Bazaar and came to be editor at Vogue and brought along her favorite photographer and Harper's who was at Abaddonn and so for a good period of time they worked they work together now it also seems to be a period of time with us a month's time photographing in the vogue studio and one more time traveling to exotic places to photographs so there there is that but I can tell you that when we did the pen show and I did it in the early 90s I came around the corner found Richard Avedon very surreptitiously looking at the show Avedon was very was very insistent that pensee his show with me and pens would say oh I'll get to it next week I'll get to it next week Abaddon was just totally an entertainer but pen did go abroad a push them to think amaze me what's different now how can I do this but he also was very good at talking about the this notion of the perversion in a picture the Virata vich actually would use the word poison what's the drop of poison that makes the story interesting that makes the beautiful woman eat the apple and fall into this world you guys that was pretty amazing and I wanna give a special thanks to the Dallas Museum of Art and to my friend Sue Canterbury for allowing me to come out and film a little bit this morning and I didn't do a lot of talking here because I really wanted Mary forced her to do a lot of the talking she is amazing she is a former curator at the Smithsonian Museum and she is absolutely brilliant and I think this was a lot of fun one of the things that I wasn't able to probably get on video is the print quality and the one of the things that I'm most stunned by in this exhibition is how good a printer irving penn really was he was really outstanding and so I did some close-ups of some things especially on the platinum palladium these are things you need to see in person and that is one of the biggest challenges in doing this show is that it's all done through video and you guys that signed up to come to the meet up we sold out and I'm really excited about that I've got people traveling in to do it you're gonna get to see it if not I highly recommend you guys come see the show it is the Dallas Museum of Art and I got to go look up the dates I don't know them offhand but I'll put them below go see this while you can it is outstanding it's an outstanding show from one of the great photographers of our time and well worth traveling to see as always if you guys enjoyed this video remember to hit the like button and share it with your friends and it's always subscribed to the art of photography so you'll always be up-to-date on all the latest and greatest stuff see you guys in the next video laterso when an exhibition opens at an art museum typically a few days before they hold an event that is called a press preview now the idea behind a press preview is to invite members of the press to come down to see the exhibition take images shoot video talk to curators and build stories around this that hopefully they will run in the media to promote the exhibition by the time it opens this morning is the press preview for Irving Penn's beyond beauty in Dallas and I've been invited and I've also been invited to bring you guys along with me so come on we're going to Dallas to see Irving Penn mostly though you would do the covers in color we have some wonderful except for one attended the first black-and-white photo cover that what I love about this image is it's one of those key images that is in a style that may not last very long for pen but yet it sweeps together a lot of things he had been thinking about and a lot of things that he would think about more and so it's a portrait it's a still life and it has that wonderful strain of surrealism and it was done for a magazine article about this active Margaret Sullavan was at the time one of the stars in Broadway and it was a new play that had just opened called the voice of the turtle where she plays this very curious and sexually precocious young girl and that's the theme of it and so what Penn has done in this picture totally styled by Penn is given us the elements of a surreal still life I mean what that hammer is doing not breaking the egg so we've got an egg and we've got a hammer and we've got some sort of medieval looking glass then we've got drawers that are partially open with stuff coming out of my mother but and but it's as a portrait it's kind of odd because she's not square in the center of it and in fact she seems to be hiding behind this other thing so she's somewhere in the middle ground but there's stuff going on in the background but he's also kind of revealed this studio set up he's gonna deconstruct at it right so it's not we sort of see how the parts were put together but she is kind of amazing for that time nobody did that so it's not something we see throughout them in the corner yes for classic deconstruction right so this is just a little before he starts those corner portraits so he's obviously playing with through flats in the studio to set it up and then it gives us other kinds of clues so there's a picture of a turtle in it voice of the turtle is the name of the play and we've got this little child drawing here and then even behind it is this some sort of bird on the wall pen love's by the way to put pictures into photographs as I mean they're like pictograph kinds of things so so here we have this deconstructed picture of portrait of Margaret Sullavan and it's got all of those elements and it just seems to be so provocative and it's that perversion that pen kind of loved to add into a picture of not making it perfect so right after this is when he begins those corner portraits where he just strips the studio bear puts those two flats together and makes people perform in them he ultimately abandons this as a style of working he said it was just way too complicated so way too complicated so let's just get the person and the flats and to see what happens having a background in graphic design and one of the things that I really think that separates Panda probably was behind much of the innovation we did is that a way of thinking like a designer conceptually using metaphor times using things like that was there anything you noticed about in knowing him just his way of thinking like that was he kind of a creative thinker what was he like I was a very creative thinker I think he was always sort of pushing let's say hey I'm not gonna say it was pushing the limits but what he did is he defined his style and then he pushed the the he pushed the the picture within the limits of that style so I think what you get is the power of resistance and as much as of just breaking free it's sort of this compression feeling that you get as part of his power he he was meticulous he was very analytical I think he he did a lot of preparatory sketches and won't call them real drawings with sketches laying out still life or a fashion shoot so he thought about it ahead of time it wasn't very spontaneous but he really thought what is the image that I want to what's the idea and how can I make that happen there are just wonderful notes from his longtime studio manager that exist in the archive of pens work at the Art Institute of Chicago a lot of written danger and all kinds of notes that she had and just a pen sort of like sending hats back not the right hat not the right hand not the right hand don't send a model with bangs I don't want bags in this picture he did all kinds of things I was extremely meticulous about yeah there was they're just wonderful anecdotal things such as he had to put a lemon in a in a photograph and so they had to send the the joke was that you had to get 500 lemons for him to choose one that he would take 500 photographs of so there's that kind of rigor and attention to detail but also a demand for perfection that met his standards you know I'm not sure that everybody who does that kind of work now gets the kind of control that a handful any weak woods even myself or Mario Testino yeah I mean they're they're designing it but you know I'm not sure that except at that level which gives us sentient Penn was at that level he was Penn indeed I was very fortunate to know mr. Penn I at first in an exhibition when I was curator at the American Art Museum at the Smithsonian in the early 90s and one of the things that's interesting about mr. Dennis once you know how you know it for a long time so it was one day I was there it was late the day and I was putting my coat on and mr. Penn said to me you might be interested in seeing these and when somebody like mr. Penn says you might be interested in seeing these you don't say gotta go take my coat off so he opened up box after box of what turns out to be now a selection in this exhibition of his very earliest work these small square formats made of the small Rolleiflex photographs that he made as a very first photographs as a young assistant from Lexi brought a at Harper's Bazaar when he got his first camera he began walking the streets of New York and making photographs mostly of shop windows of curious signs of things on the street he was for a real period of time a street photographer I think that they were friends but they were very competitive friends the competition really heated up when Diana Vreeland left Harper's Bazaar and came to be editor at Vogue and brought along her favorite photographer and Harper's who was at Abaddonn and so for a good period of time they worked they work together now it also seems to be a period of time with us a month's time photographing in the vogue studio and one more time traveling to exotic places to photographs so there there is that but I can tell you that when we did the pen show and I did it in the early 90s I came around the corner found Richard Avedon very surreptitiously looking at the show Avedon was very was very insistent that pensee his show with me and pens would say oh I'll get to it next week I'll get to it next week Abaddon was just totally an entertainer but pen did go abroad a push them to think amaze me what's different now how can I do this but he also was very good at talking about the this notion of the perversion in a picture the Virata vich actually would use the word poison what's the drop of poison that makes the story interesting that makes the beautiful woman eat the apple and fall into this world you guys that was pretty amazing and I wanna give a special thanks to the Dallas Museum of Art and to my friend Sue Canterbury for allowing me to come out and film a little bit this morning and I didn't do a lot of talking here because I really wanted Mary forced her to do a lot of the talking she is amazing she is a former curator at the Smithsonian Museum and she is absolutely brilliant and I think this was a lot of fun one of the things that I wasn't able to probably get on video is the print quality and the one of the things that I'm most stunned by in this exhibition is how good a printer irving penn really was he was really outstanding and so I did some close-ups of some things especially on the platinum palladium these are things you need to see in person and that is one of the biggest challenges in doing this show is that it's all done through video and you guys that signed up to come to the meet up we sold out and I'm really excited about that I've got people traveling in to do it you're gonna get to see it if not I highly recommend you guys come see the show it is the Dallas Museum of Art and I got to go look up the dates I don't know them offhand but I'll put them below go see this while you can it is outstanding it's an outstanding show from one of the great photographers of our time and well worth traveling to see as always if you guys enjoyed this video remember to hit the like button and share it with your friends and it's always subscribed to the art of photography so you'll always be up-to-date on all the latest and greatest stuff see you guys in the next video later\n"