Maya's video: Irving Penn

"Photographing a cake can be art" —Irving Penn. Pablo Picasso, Alfred Hitchcock, Sophia Loren, Al Pacino, Truman Capote, Woody Allen, Igor Stravinsky... and Vogue! Irving Penn (June 16, 1917 -- October 7, 2009) was an American photographer known for his portraiture and fashion photography. Irving Penn studied under Alexey Brodovitch at the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art (now the University of the Arts) from which he was graduated in 1938. Penn's drawings were published by Harper's Bazaar and he also painted. As his career in photography blossomed, he became known for post World War II feminine chic and glamour photography. Penn worked for many years doing fashion photography for Vogue magazine, founding his own studio in 1953. He was among the first photographers to pose subjects against a simple grey or white backdrop and used this simplicity more effectively than other photographers. Expanding his austere studio surroundings, Penn constructed a set of upright angled backdrops, to form a stark, acute corner. Subjects photographed with this technique included Martha Graham, Marcel Duchamp, Pablo Picasso, Georgia O'Keeffe, W. H. Auden, Igor Stravinsky. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_Penn (Music: Ryuichi Sakamoto - Solitude)