Irving Penn Centennial Retrospective at The Met

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York presents a major retrospective of Irving Penn (1917-2009), marking the centenary of his birth. Running from April 24 to July 30, 2017, the exhibition spans seventy years of the photographer's career across genres including fashion, portraiture, still life, and ethnographic studies. Penn, known for his mastery of black-and-white and color photography, captured celebrities like Truman Capote, Pablo Picasso, Marlene Dietrich, Salvador Dalí, and Francis Bacon, as well as anonymous subjects. The show features his iconic Small Trades series (1950-51), portraits of indigenous peoples from Peru, Morocco, and New Guinea, and works with found objects. It also highlights his fashion photography, including images of his wife Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn, and models Nadja Auermann, Kate Moss, and Nicole Kidman. The retrospective was previously presented at Palazzo Grassi in Venice in 2014, the first major Italian exhibition of Penn's work.