Irving Penn was an American photographer known for his commercial and fine artwork. Penn’s career included work at Vogue magazine and independent advertising work for clients including Issey Miyake and Clinique. He used both large format and 35mm cameras. In 1943, Alexander Liberman, the director of Vogue magazine, hired Penn as a designer for the publication, while also encouraging him to pursue a career in fashion photography. By the early 1950s, the artist had established himself as an important photographer in the industry. I want to look at both his still life and fashion work, of which two examples are above. His style often circulates around the style of being black and white with strong lighting on the model. I like his work. It’s very striking and bold and draws in the viewer with this. His work radicalized modern photography as a medium, creating a canon that would manifest a rich and influential legacy of commercial and personal work. I’m going to take inspiration from mostly his fashion still life work as I find the way he advertises an item without the whole model really interesting and wants to experiment with this in my own still life work.