Irving Penn Master Images: The Collections of the National Museum of American Art and the National Portrait Gallery

Featuring an interesting variety of photographs from Penn's work of over half a century, this aptly subtitled book offers a pleasing selection of studio portraits (both formal and reasonably informal) and still lifes of found objects. Readers will find portraits of 20th-century notables such as E.B. White, Georgia O'Keeffe, W.H. Auden, Igor Stravinsky, and Marlene Dietrich along with group portraits of hippies and Hell's Angels, not to mention classic photographs of chimney sweeps and other tradespeople of Paris and London. Add photographs from trips to Cameroon and Morocco, and one is left with a very good representation of the life's work of a photographer best known for his efforts in the fashion industry. Drawn from the collections of the National Museum of American Art and the National Portrait Gallery, the photographs are reproduced well in duotone. Highly recommended for both academic and public libraries.
Raymond Bial, Parkland Coll. Lib., Champaign, Ill.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.