It must have been a Monday, my day to pick up the coffee for the photo studio.. the year was 1973...
That morning, in front of me waited a man - somewhat bald - in cordovan shoes, wrinkled jeans, a wrinkled shirt, his little bits of hair in disarray. Before moving on with his coffee, he man turned to me with a nice, gentle smile .
During the 5 minutes it took to get to my friend's studio & 100 5th Ave, I kept on saying to myself, "Who was that man?".. There was an aura around him. As I walked in to the studio, there he was again. It was then I realized that I was experiencing my very first encounter with Irving Penn.
Mr. Penn was walking in circles around a table piled with cosmetics. Every circuit or so around he would bump the table with his knee, jostling the stuff on top. He would sit, reorganize it slightly and again circle and knock the table. After some time, an assistant picked up the objects up and brought them to the set, in front of Mr. Penn's camera.
The photos we will look at in the Morgan are endowed with all the attributes of my first experience of the presence of Mr. Penn. His visual stories have always being told in terms of formal elements against the wearing of time, as his own was revealed in the contrast of wrinkled clothing and formal cordovan shoes.
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