Irving Penn’s Unsentimental Flowers
by David Schonauer
A rose is a rose is a rose.
But not when it’s photographed by Irving Penn.
In 1967, legendary creative director Alexander Lieberman commissioned Penn to create a still-life series for the December issue of American Vogue. Penn delivered images that have nothing to do with the sentimental conceits usually associated with lovely blooms. Rather, they focused on form, pattern, texture and color. Penn and Lieberman were presumably happy with the result, because the photographer went on to photograph more flowers for Vogue — showcasing one species a year in the magazine’s December issue through 1974 in what became a holiday tradition. The work was later collected in the 1980 book Flowers, but Penn returned to the subject again and again up until his death in 2009.
Now, for the first time, the flower images can be seen in their entirety in the exhibition “Irving Penn: Flowers,” at the Hamiltons gallery in London through January 16, 2016. Gallery owner Tim Jeffries has done similar exhibitions with other Penn oeuvres in his previous exhibitions “Cigarettes” (2012) and “Cranium Architecture” (2013).
“Penn’s approach to the still life evolved over decades,” notes the gallery. “[F]rom the 1930s onwards, he arranged everyday objects to create assemblage that transcended their origins and original purpose to become conceptual works of art. His apparently simplistic compositions are void of sentimentality and focus on the detail, form and wonder of each specimen.”
Over the years, Penn photographed tulips, peonies, orchids, roses, lillies, begonias and wild flowers, capturing each flower in a slightly different way, but always in his signature minimal style against a plain background. Jeffries tells the AnOther blog that his favorites include Penn’s “Cottage Tulip,” which he calls “an amazing composition of color and form,” and the image “Poppy Glowing Embers.”
“The dye-transfer process he used to make the print provides the truest reproduction of the actual flower due to the highly saturated colors,” he notes.
Jeffies explains that Penn’s early training — he studied at the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art under the tutelage of Alexey Brodovitch, who would later become famous for his work at Harper’s Bazaar — and his exposure to old masters of painting and sculpture influenced his evolution as a photographer.
“He showed conceptual depth from the start, and he continued to interpret, explore and push the boundaries of modernism in his treatment of still life subjects,” he says. “The flowers help to demonstrate that exploration, since they became a focus of his attention over more than three decades.”
David Schonauer is Editor of Pro Photo Daily, Profiles and Motion Arts Pro. Follow him on Twitter. Jeffrey Roberts is Publisher of American Photography (AI-AP) the finest juried collection of photography in hardcover as well as Pro Photo Daily. Follow Jeffrey on Twitter. Follow Pro Photo Daily on Facebook.
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