Irving Penn : portraits

From Penn's early work of the 1940s to recent images made in the twenty-first century, "Irving Penn Portraits" honors a selection of photographs with reproductions of superb quality.

Among those featured are Giorgio de Chirico, Igor Stravinsky, Pablo Picasso, Duke Ellington, Marlene Dietrich, Woody Allen, Rudolf Nureyev, Helmut Newton and Jasper Johns.

Irving Penn was born in 1917, in Plainfield, New Jersey.

In a career of more than sixty years, he created an extensive and influential body of photographs in portraiture, fashion and still life.

His work resides in the permanent collections of major museums internationally and has been published in over twenty-five monographs and exhibited throughout the world. The full list of contents include: Giorgio de Chirico, The Angel, Cecil Beaton with Nude, Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning, Peter Ustinov, Edith Piaf, Elsa Schiaparelli, Truman Capote, Igor Stravinsky, Ballet Society, Joan Miro and his daughter, Dolores, Tarragona, Caffe Greco, Marlene Dietrich, Alberto Giacometti, Colette, Tennessee Williams, Pablo Picasso, Francis Bacon, Saul Bellow, Rudolph Nureyev, Barnett Newman, Saul Steinberg, Duke Ellington, Woody Allen, Issey Miyake, Louise Bourgeois, Helmut Newton, Ellsworth Kelly, Chuck Close, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Kenneth Noland.

This title accompanies a major exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London (18 February-6 June 2010), followed by a European tour.

It is the first book ever dedicated to the portraits of Irving Penn.

It includes thirty stunning tri-tone photographic reproductions.

Photographs are drawn from across seven decades, from the celebrated 'Portrait Series of 1947-8' to an arresting image of Jasper Johns captured as recently as 2006.