Hannah's Photography.: Irving Penn Exhibition

Along with the rest of the class I went to view the Irving Penn exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. Penn is a world famous and much loved photographer and I believe this exhibition of his portraits reflects this well. His images are all beautifully shot and I was captivated as soon as I walked in the room. The exhibition boasts images from seven decades, including many famous faces such as Christian Dior, Al Pacino, Pablo Picasso and Alfred Hitchcock.

Penn was quoted as saying "In portrait photography there is something more profound we seek inside a person, while being painfully aware that a limitation of our medium is that the inside is recordable only so far as it is apparent on the outside". Penn used a very plain and basic set when shooting his subjects so that they couldn’t hide behind the luxury that they were usually offered and they only had their true personality to count on and shine through. His portraits were often shot close up, and he used many different visual tricks to get the subject to express their personality to the camera. He became well-known for introducing this new style to portrait photography, which now has become a successful and popular style for many photographers since. His close-up images showed every single detail on the subjects face and gave me a real feeling of intimacy with the subject. You can see every single hair, line and mark. This is displayed in the two images I have added.

Penn once said that "sensitive people faced with the prospect of a camera portrait put on a face they think is the one they would like to show to the world … Every often what lies behind the facade is rare and more wonderful than the subject knows or dares to believe." When looking at his images I feel the connection between Penn and his subjects and how he coaxed them out of their shell. This then gives me, as an audience member, the same feeling of connection with the model which then makes me warm to them more as a person. He makes his subjects appear more ordinary as the image is shot with such a minimalistic style. Overall I think this exhibition is a must see and it imprints that Penn is a inspirational portrait photographer of whom there is a lot to be learnt from.