Irving Penn
Platinum Prints
Yale University Press, New Haven and London, UK, 2005
Sarah Greenough
pages 192
first edition
dimensions 28.5 × 24.5 cm, hardcover with jacket
language English
ISBN 0-300-10906-7
ARTISTS
Irving Penn

He grew up in a family of Jewish and Russian descent and was the younger brother of the famous filmmaker Arthur Penn. At eighteen, he enrolled in the drawing, painting, graphic and industrial arts course at the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art. For four years he took the course taught by Alexey Brodovitch, editor-in-chief of "Harper's Bazar Magazine." In 1938 he managed to work as art director at Junior League Magazine. At age twenty-five he quit his job and left for Mexico where he began painting with the goal of becoming a painter. Here Penn travels extensively and falls in love with the landscapes of South America; it is at this juncture that he approaches photography.