A Notebook at Random

About this book

From his very first photograph made on assignment for Vogue in 1943 to the fresh images that he continues to make for that magazine today at age eighty-seven Irving Penn again and again has shown an uncanny ability to surprise the world with his art. Far from a typical career retrospective A Notebook at Random is a revelation. Included here are some of Penns signature images - austere elegantly composed portraits still lifes and fashion photographs - along with rough sketches and line drawings that provide a window into ideas and images in the making. A consummate technician and innovator Penn invites us to consider process alongside end product providing new insight into his radical compositions experiments with light and unique printing techniques. A Notebook at Random is populated with artists writers and models whose lives intersected with Penns: Picasso Jean Cocteau and Lisa Fonssagrives look out at us with that timeless intensity that characterizes an Irving Penn portrait. Many of the photographs presented here are alternate poses or torn test fragments pages from his personal "notebook"; some are newer discoveries including a previously unpublished portrait of Truman Capote. Some of the most striking pages in this "notebook" reproduce Penns paintings painted photographs and mixed-media works images so layered and exquisitely constructed that they resemble cubist assemblages. And in keeping with Penns long-standing commitment to the optimal presentation of his work this book is produced to the most exacting standards: fine paper full cloth binding and reproductions that are almost indistinguishable from his originals.