Irving Penn, Resonance

From April 13, 2014, to January 6, 2015, Palazzo Grassi presents “Irving Penn, Resonance”, an exhibition curated by Pierre Apraxine and Matthieu Humery and dedicated to one of the major photographers in the 20th century, Irving Penn.

The exhibition includes 82 platinum prints, 29 gelatin silver prints, 5 dye transfer prints and 17 internegatives, which are exhibited for the first time. The show is not a retrospective and does not follow a chronological order, but aims to underline the development of styles, interests and techniques used by Irving Penn by focusing on the main themes tackled by the artist during his entire career: from a series of portraits of celebrities from the world of art, cinema and literature to the tribesmen from New Guinea, from still life photography to the “small trades” and nude studies. This broad overview of the famous photographer’s work puts relatively unknown images side-by-side with the most iconic ones, thereby revealing the diversity in Irving Penn’s work, which is in itself an invaluable legacy to the world of photography.