Still Life : Irving Penn Photographs 1938-2000

From his innovative and ongoing work for the editorial pages of Vogue magazine to the harsher personal work of his later years, which explores the visual intrigue of such inconsquential objects as litter, bones and cigarette butts, his work has a wit, simplicity and edginess that sets it apart. John Szarkowski, in his introductory essay, notes that 'for more than forty years Penn's pictures celebrated the pleasures of this life, even while always acknowledging the worm in the apple...Some of his more recent still lifes seem in contrast to have less to do with pleasure than with something like cultural reportage'. Irving Penn has personally overseen every detail of this elegant book's design and production. An extraordinary effort has been made to create on the printed page reproductions that have a fidelity to the briliance of the colour images and the nuances and subtlety of the platinum prints.