Hello, what’s up? This is Alan, I am a journalist and this is Ingresse na Arte, my culture channel on YouTube.
In this video, I talk about photography and about the “Irving Penn – Centennial” art exhibition .
Whoever goes to the Instituto Moreira Salles museum in the city of São Paulo shoud be ready to strike a pose.
No, I am not exaggerating. After all, the photographer who has his artwork reviewed in this exhibition worked for six decades on Vogue magazine
and was responsible for producing over than 160 covers in this iconic fashion magazine.
Through the lens of the photographic camera of this photographer, who was born in 1917
and worked until 2009, at age 92, the most influential models were photographed.
Among the Brazilians, it is possible to mention Carol Trentini, who posed for Irving Penn in 2006 when she was 19 years old.
The photo of this photo shoot is one of the highlights of this art exhibition.
On the experience of posing for Irving Penn, Carol said in an interview published on Brazilian “Vogue” magazine
that there was a silence and soft atmosphere in the photo sessions with him. It was like they were in a meditation atmosphere.
This art exhibition gathers over than 250 photos from several phases of Irving Penn's career that before becoming a photographer wanted to be a painter.
He graduated as a designer and art director, and in 1938 when he moved to New York,
he worked as an assistant to Alexey Brodovitch on “Harper’s Bazaar” fashion magazine.
During all this time, he began to create some photographic techniques taking photos
of manuscripts and streets signs in Philadelphia, where he studied, and in New York.
It was only after 1946, when he began working for “Vogue” magazine, that he started to devote himself deeply to photography.
After World War II, he began to be known for taking photos of some intellectuals such as
writer Truman Capote, surrealist painter Salvador Dalí and filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock.
It is worth paying attention to the vulnerability of these people whom Irving Penn used to take photos.
This used to happen because he created a studio to show not a public version that these people built for society.
He wanted to show the real personality of these people.
Although he worked for a fashion magazine, his photos were not too much glamorous.
In Paris, for instance, he built a studio on the top floor of a building without lift. So, think of a fashion model going up
and getting in this studio without a lift? No glamour, for sure. And he wanted exactly that!
“Irving Penn – Centennial” also features photos he took in Peru when he traveled there in the late 1940s.
There, this photographer found out a small studio and took photos of women and men to show the richness of the details of their costumes.
He also traveled to Asia and Africa, where he took photos of people who lived there to show the richness of their clothes.
It is worth highlighting the series of photographs of naked women.
These women were very different of those who were on the pages of “Vogue” magazine, which were very thin, a situation that still there is nowadays,
despite the popularity of plus size models and the not-so-current debate about the thinness of the models in the fashion market.
If you want to register your visit at “Irving Penn – Centennial”, in the last room of this exhibition,
there is a structure that recreates one of Irving Penn’ studios. Be sure to strike a quite nice pose.
“Irving Penn – Centennial” is featured in Sao Paulo after being exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, in Paris and in Berlin.
This is it. Next Friday, there is a new video on this channel.
If you like this video, share this idea, talk to your friends about this channel, strike a pose and visit "Irving Penn" art exhibit. See you soon. Bye bye.
