Imogen Cunningham was a pioneering female photographer who strove to capture reality through her lens. Her remarkable portrait, nude and still life photography helped establish the medium as an art form.

Below we’ve listed 30 of the best Imogen Cunningham’s to inspire, motivate and help advance your photography.

Imogen Cunningham Quotes

Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I’m going to take tomorrow.

Once a woman who does street work said to me, ‘I’ve never photographed anyone I haven’t asked first.’ I said to her, ‘Suppose Cartier-Bresson asked the man who jumped the puddle to do it again – it never would have been the same. Start stealing!’

I don’t talk about success. I don’t know what it is. Wait until I’m dead.

My interest in photography has something to do with the aesthetic, and that there should be a little beauty in everything.

I never divide photographers into creative and uncreative, I just call them photographers. Who is creative? How do you know who is creative or not?

Everybody who does anything for the public can be criticized. There’s always someone who doesn’t like it.

Cunningham on Subjects

[My] taste lay somewhere between reality and dreamland.

I photograph anything that can be exposed to light. The reason during the twenties that I photographed plants was that I had three children under the age of four to take care of so I was cooped up. I had a garden available and I photographed them indoors. Later when I was free I did other things.

I’ve tried my best to sell people on the idea that I photograph anything that can be exposed to light.

I never stopped photographing. There were a couple of years when I didn’t have a darkroom, but that didn’t stop me from photographing.

You know, a documentary is only interesting once in a while. If you look at a whole book of Dorothea [Lange]’s where she has row after row of people bending over and digging out carrots – that can be very tedious. And so it’s only once in a while that something happens that is worth doing.

I don’t like landscapes. I never had had the time to run out when the weather was right. You know, always I would be getting dinner for somebody, when it was sunset time, when you can do a nice landscape. Or, crack of dawn, I’m not there. So, I’ve very seldom have done anything that could be called a landscape. But I do things in a landscape.

I’m still sticking with people more than things and I don’t walk around the city as much as I did. I don’t know why. Telephone. All the other agonies of life, keep you from doing what you really think you should do.

I was invited to photograph Hollywood. They asked me what I would like to photograph. I said, Ugly men.

Portrait Photography Quotes

The thing that’s fascinating about portraiture is that nobody is alike.

So many people dislike themselves so thoroughly that they never see any reproduction of themselves that suits. None of us is born with the right face. It’s a tough job being a portrait photographer.

A woman said to me when she first sat down, You’re photographing the wrong side of my face. I said, Oh, is there one?

I turn people into human beings by not making them into gods.

Related: 150+ Portrait Photography Quotes

Oh, you ask me, what is the greatest torture of a person who does portraits for a living? I could fill several volumes with nice nasty stories. I don’t know.

When you do portraits professionally it’s not a desire, it’s for money.

One must be able to gain an understanding at short notice and close range of the beauties of character, intellect, and spirit so as to be able to draw out the best qualities and make them show in the outer aspect of the sitter. To do this one must not have a too pronounced notion of what constitutes beauty in the external and, above all, must not worship it. To worship beauty for its own sake is narrow, and one surely cannot derive from it that esthetic pleasure which comes from finding beauty in the commonest things.

Ansel [Adams] once said to somebody that I [Cunningham] was versatile, but what he really meant was that I jump around. I’m never satisfied staying in one spot very long, I couldn’t stay with the mountains and I couldn’t stay with the trees and I couldn’t stay with the rivers. But I can always stay with people, because they really are different.

Cunningham Quotes for Better Photography

I just believe in working. I’m not one of those romantic explainers of my own individual point of view.

I don’t think there’s any such thing as teaching people photography, other than influencing them a little. People have to be their own learners. They have to have a certain talent.

I wasn’t very ambitious. I think that’s the solution. I just took things as they came. I wouldn’t say I didn’t have any problem, but I didn’t care. I didn’t think I was going to save the world by doing photography as some of these people do. I was just having a good time doing it, and so I still had a good time no matter what I had to photograph.

There are too many people studying it [photography] now who are never going to make it. You can’t give them a formula for making it. You have to have it in you first, you don’t learn it. The seeing eye is the important thing.

…I can’t recreate my feelings about how I happened to do this or that, because a lot of my stuff was done without any motivation, more than just what I call having a good time fooling around.

I made a lot of mistakes, and I still do. But, I try not to worry about it, because I never will be the perfectionist, and I never tried to be, I guess. Just so they didn’t come out all, mussed up. I don’t think anyone knows his own work. We always make mistakes about what we like and what we don’t like. One can never tell, I’ve done so many things that I’ve no idea about how to evaluate them.

The formula for doing a good job in photography is to think like a poet.

What’s your Favorite Imogen Cunningham Quote?

Have a favorite Imogen Cunningham quote from the list? Let us know in the comment section below.

Don’t forget to bookmark this page, or print it out, and refer to it next time you need some inspiration. If you’ve found the article helpful, then we would be grateful if you could share it with other photographers.

To see more of Imogen Cunningham’s photography, head over to the image archive on the Imogen Cunningham Trust website.

Looking for more words of wisdom from master photographers? Check out the quotes section of Photogpedia for more great photography quotes.

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• Ansel Adams Quotes
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Andre Kertesz was a pioneer of street photography and a remarkable still life photogapher. In a career that spanned seven decades, he captured everyday life with poetic beauty and elevated ordinary objects to exquisite art.

Below we’ve listed 23 of our favorite quotes from one of the most influential photographers in the history of medium to inspire and help take your photography to the next level.

Andre Kertesz Quotes

The camera is my tool. Through it I give a reason to everything around me.

I can’t talk about my style. It us kind of difficult for me. I don’t like styles. I only like taking photos and expressing myself through them.

Photography is my only language.

I am not a surrealist. I am only a realist. All this group – surrealists – use my name. No, no, I am realist.

Of course a picture can lie, but only if you are not honest with yourself…

I attribute to photography the task of recording the real nature of things, their interior, their life. The photographer’s art is a continuous discovery which requires patience and time. A photograph draws its beauty from the truth with which it’s marked. For this very reason I refuse all the tricks of the trade and professional virtuosity which could make me betray my career.

As soon as I find a subject which interests me, I leave it to the lens to record it truthfully. Look at the reporters and at the amateur photographer! They both have only one goal; to record a memory or a document. And that is pure photography.

The most valuable things in a life are a man’s memories. And they are priceless.

Kertesz on Subjects

I am a lucky man. I can do something with almost anything I see. Everything is still interesting to me.

You do not have to imagine things; reality gives you all you need.

Everything is a subject. Every subject has a rhythm. To feel it is the raison d’être. The photograph is a fixed moment of such a raison d’être, which lives on in itself.

Because I’m forever a beginner who discovers the world again and again.

I do not document anything, I give an interpretation.

People in motion are wonderful to photograph. It means catching the right moment… when one thing changes into something else.

The moment always dictates in my work. What I feel, I do. This is the most important thing for me, Everybody can look, but they don’t necessarily see. I never calculate or consider; I see a situation and I know that it’s right, even if I have to go back to get the proper lighting.

Kertesz Quotes on Technique

Technique isn’t important. Technique is in the blood. Events and mood are more important than good light and the happening is what is important.

If you want to write you should learn the alphabet. You write and write and in the end you hava a beautiful, perfect alphabet. But it isn’t the alphabed that is important. The important thing is what you are writing, what you are expressing. The same thing goes for photography. Photographs can be technically perfect and even beautiful, but they have no expression.

I am an amateur and I intend to stay that way for the rest of my life.

I do what I feel, that’s all, I am an ordinary photographer working for his own pleasure. That’s all I’ve ever done.

I like high shots. If you are on the same level, you lose many things.

Have confidence in the inventions and transformations of chance.

Seeing is not enough; you have to feel what you photograph.

I just walk around, observing the subject from various angles until the picture elements arrange themselves into a composition that pleases my eye.

What’s your Favorite Andre Kertesz Quote?

Have a favorite Andre Kertesz quote from the list? Let us know in the comment section below.

Don’t forget to bookmark this page, or print it out, and refer to it next time you need some inspiration. If you’ve found the article helpful, then we would be grateful if you could share it with other photographers.

To see more of Andre Kertesz’s photography, check out the Kertesz image archive on the Artsy.net website.

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Recommended book: Andre Kertesz: His Life and Work

Looking for more words of wisdom from master photographers? Visit the quotes section of Photogpedia for more great photography quotes.

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Edward Weston Quotes

I find myself every so often looking at my ground glass as though the unrecorded image might escape me!

This then: to photograph a rock, have it look like a rock, but be more than a rock. Significant representations – not interpretation.

Photography suits the temper of this age – of active bodies and minds. It is a perfect medium for one whose mind is teeming with ideas, imagery, for a prolific worker who would be slowed down by painting or sculpting, for one who sees quickly and acts decisively, accurately.

Photography to the amateur is recreation, to the professional it is work, and hard work too, no matter how pleasurable it my be.

When money enters in, – then, for a price, I become a liar, – and a good one I can be whether with pencil or subtle lighting or viewpoint. I hate it all, but so do I support not only my family, but my own work.

If I have any ‘message’ worth giving to a beginner it is that there are no short cuts in photography.

The fact is that relatively few photographers ever master their medium. Instead they allow the medium to master them and go on an endless squirrel cage chase from new lens to new paper to new developer to new gadget, never staying with one piece of equipment long enough to learn its full capacities, becoming lost in a maze of technical information that is of little or no use since they don’t know what to do with it.

Learning to See and Discovery

The photographer’s most important and likewise most difficult task is not learning to manage his camera, or to develop, or to print. It is learning to see photographically – that is, learning to see his subject matter in terms of the capacities of his tools and processes, so that he can instantaneously translate the elements and values in a scene before him into the photograph he wants to make.

I start with no preconceived idea – discovery excites me to focus – then rediscovery through the lens – final form of presentation seen on ground glass, the finished print previsioned completely in every detail of texture, movement, proportion, before exposure. The shutter’s release automatically and finally fixes my conception, allowing no after manipulation – the ultimate end, the print, is but a duplication of all that I saw and felt through my camera.

…through this photographic eye you will be able to look out on a new light-world, a world for the most part uncharted and unexplored, a world that lies waiting to be discovered and revealed.

The photograph isolates and perpetuates a moment of time: an important and revealing moment, or an unimportant and meaningless one, depending upon the photographer’s understanding of his subject and mastery of his process.

As great a picture can be made as one’s mental capacity–no greater. Art cannot be taught; it must be self-inspiration, though the imagination may be fired and the ambition and work directed by the advice and example of others.

A painter of prolific imagination might not be able to execute a hundredth of his ideas on canvas in a lifetime because of the time consumed by his recording process. But for the photographer seeing and recording are almost simultaneous. His output is limited only by his ability to see. For this reason it has always been my belief that an experienced photographer, given the means to devote himself entirely to creative expression, should be able to produce a tremendous amount of valuable work.

Weston on Finding Subjects

Anything that excites me for any reason, I will photograph; not searching for unusual subject matter, but making the commonplace unusual.

My true program is summed up in one word: life. I expect to photograph anything suggested by that word which appeals to me.

Anything more than 500 yards from the car just isn’t photogenic.

Very often people looking at my pictures say, ‘You must have had to wait a long time to get that cloud just right (or that shadow, or the light).’ As a matter of fact, I almost never wait, that is, unless I can see that the thing will be right in a few minutes.

But if I must wait an hour for the shadow to move, or the light to change, or the cow to graze in the other direction, then I put up my camera and go on, knowing that I am likely to find three subjects just as good in the same hour.

The camera should be used for a recording of life,for rendering the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself, whether it be polished steel or palpitating flesh.

I see no reason for recording the obvious.

Landscape and Nature Photography

[Weston defines photography as] a way of self-development, a means to discover and identify oneself with all the manifestations of basic forms – with nature, the source.

It seems so utterly naive that landscape – not that of the pictorial school – is not considered of “social significance” when it has a far more important bearing on the human race of a given locale than excrescences called cities.

Should we use “abstract” in describing a photograph ?… The most abstract line or form, of necessity is based on actuality – derived from nature, even as God is pictured a glorified man… To keep one’s feet planted to terra firma is to keep the head poised and receptive.

l do not wish to impose my personality upon nature (any of life’s manifestations), but without prejudice or falsification to become identified with nature, to know things in their very essence, so that what I record is not an interpretation – my idea of what nature should be but a revelation – a piercing of the smoke screen artificially cast over life by irrelevant, humanly limited exigencies, into an absolute, impersonal recognition.

Edward Weston on Portrait Photography

[Weston’s definition of a portrait photograher] …to reveal the individual before his camera, to transfer the living quality of that individual to his finished print…Not to make road maps but to record the essential truth of the subject; not to show how this person looks, but to show what he is.

Success in photography, portraits especially, is dependent on being able to grasp those supreme instants which pass with the ticking of a clock, never to be duplicated – so light, balance – expression must be seen – felt as it were – in a flash, the mechanics and technique being so perfected in one as to be absolutely automatic.

Ultimately success or failure in photographing people depends on the photographer’s ability to understand his fellow man.

Related: 150+ Portrait Photography Quotes

Edward Weston Quotes on Composition

Composition is the strongest way of seeing.

To compose a subject well means no more than to see and present it in the strongest manner possible.

When subject matter is forced to fit into preconceived patterns, there can be no freshness of vision. Following rules of composition can only lead to a tedious repetition of pictorial cliches.

Now to consult the rules of composition before making a picture is a little like consulting the law of gravitation before going for a walk. Such rules and laws are deduced from the accomplished fact; they are the products of reflection.

Weston on Experimentation

I would say to any artist: ‘Don’t be repressed in your work, dare to experiment, consider any urge, if in a new direction all the better.

My own eyes are no more than scouts on a preliminary search, for the camera’s eye may entirely change my idea.

Photography has certain inherent qualities which are only possible with photography – one being the delineation of detail… why limit yourself to what your eyes see when you have such an opportunity to extend your vision?

The camera sees more than the eye, so why not make use of it?

I want the stark beauty that a lens can so exactly render presented without interference of artistic effect.

The prejudice many photographers have against colour photography comes from not thinking of colour as form. You can say things with colour that can’t be said in black and white… Those who say that colour will eventually replace black and white are talking nonsense. The two do not compete with each other. They are different means to different ends.

One does not think during creative work, any more than one thinks when driving a car. But one has a background of years – learning, unlearning, success, failure, dreaming, thinking, experience, all this – then the moment of creation, the focusing of all into the moment. So I can make ‘without thought,’ fifteen carefully considered negatives, one every fifteen minutes, given material with as many possibilities. But there is all the eyes have seen in this life to influence me.

What’s your Favorite Edward Weston Quote?

Have a favorite Edward Weston quote from the list? Let us know in the comment section below.

Don’t forget to bookmark this page, or print it out, and refer to it next time you need some inspiration. If you’ve enjoyed the article, we would be grateful if you could share it with other photographers.

To see more of Weston’s remarkable photography, check out the image archive on the Edward Weston Gallery website.

Looking for more words of wisdom from master photographers? Visit the quotes section of Photogpedia for more great photography quotes.

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Edward Steichen Quotes

A photograph is worth a thousand words, provided it is accompanied by only ten words.

Once you really commence to see things, then you really commence to feel things.

When that shutter clicks, anything else that can be done afterward is not worth consideration.

Long before the birth of a word language the caveman communicated by visual images. The invention of photography gave visual communication its most simple, direct, universal language.

Usefulness has always been attractive in the art of photography.

Photography records the gamut of feelings written on the human face – the beauty of the earth and skies that man has inherited; and the wealth and confusion that man has created. It is a major force in explaining man to man.

You know… that a blank wall is an appalling thing to look at. The wall of a museum – a canvas – a piece of film – or a guy sitting in front of a typewriter. Then, you start out to do something – that vague thing called creation. The beginning strikes awe within you.

Every other artist begins (with) a blank canvas, a piece of paper… the photographer begins with the finished product.

When I first became interested in photography… my idea was to have it recognized as one of the fine arts. Today I don’t give a hoot in hell about that. The mission of photography is to explain man to man and each to himself. And that is the most complicated things on earth and almost as naïve as a tender plant.

Photography is a medium of formidable contradictions. It is both ridiculously easy and almost impossibly difficult. It is easy because its technical rudiments can readily be mastered by anyonwith a few simple instructions. It is difficult because, while while the artist working in any other medium begins with a blank surface and gradually brings his conception into being, the photographer is the only imagemaker who begins with the picture completed. His emotions, his knowledge, and his native talent are brought into focus and fixed beyond recall the moment the shutter of his camera has closed.

Steichen on Portraits and Nude Photography

Most photographers seem to operate with a pane of glass between themselves and their subjects. They just can’t get inside and know the subject.

A portrait must get beyond the almost universal self-consciousness that people have before the camera. If at some moment of reality… did not happen, you had to provoke it in order to… awaken a genuine response.

A portrait is not made in the camera but on either side of it.

The people in the audience looked at the pictures, and the people in the pictures looked back at them. They recognized each other.

In none of these figures is the face visible. For many years everyone had prejudices against posing in the nude, and even professional models usually insisted, when they posed for nude pictures, that their faces be not shown.

Equipment and Light Quotes

No photographer is as good as the simplest camera.

I was coming to realize that the real magician was light itself – mysterious and ever-changing light with its accompanying shadows rich and full of mystery.

Some day there may be… machinery that needs but to be wound up and sent roaming o’er hill and dale, through fields and meadows, by babbling brooks and shady woods – in short, a machine that will discriminately select its subject and, by means of a skillful arrangement of springs and screws, compose its motif, expose the plate, develop, print, and even mount and frame the result of its excursion, so that there will be nothing for us to do but to send it to the Royal Photographic Society’s exhibition and gratefully to receive the ‘Royal Medal’

Steichen on Printing

It is rather amusing, this tendency of the wise to regard a print which has been locally manipulated as irrational photography – this tendency which finds an esthetic tone of expression in the word faked. A manipulated print may be not a photograph. The personal intervention between the action of the light and the print itself may be a blemish on the purity of photography. But, whether this intervention consists merely of marking, shading and tinting in a direct print, or of stippling, painting and scratching on the negative, or of using glycerine, brush and mop on a print, faking has set in, and the results must always depend upon the photographer, upon his personality, his technical ability and his feeling. BUT long before this stage of conscious manipulation has been begun, faking has already set in.

In the very beginning, when the operator controls and regulates his time of exposure, when in dark-room the developer is mixed for detail, breadth, flatness or contrast, faking has been resorted to. In fact, every photograph is a fake from start to finish, a purely impersonal, unmanipulated photograph being practically impossible. When all is said, it still remains entirely a matter of degree and ability.

Edward Steichen Quotes on Art

Art for art’s sake is dead, if it ever lived.

The use of the term “art medium” is, to say the least, misleading, for it is the artist that creates a work of art not the medium. It is the artist in photography that gives form to content by a distillation of ideas, thought, experience, insight and understanding.

Today I am no longer concerned with photography as an art form. I believe it is potentially the best medium for explaining man to himself and to his fellow man.

I don’t care about making photography an art. I want to make good photographs. I’d like to know who first got it into his head that dreaminess and mist is an art. Take things as they are; take good photographs and the art will take care of itself.

Experimentation and Finding your Style

The precision of his (Harry Callahan) skill places his work beyond the tentative and the experimental stage. He is continually searching and exploring both himself and his surroundings. and in this exploration of the realm of places, people and things, contrasts and relationships, Callahan is no respecter of conventional technical formula or code. His delicate sense of pattern is an integral part of his photography and not a thing by itself.

There is only one optimist. He has been here since man has been on this earth, and that is man himself. If we hadn’t had such a magnificent optimism to carry us through all these things, we wouldn’t be here. We have survived it on our optimism.

If it were possible for any one person or group of persons to go through a photographic finishing plant’s work at the end of a day, you could probably pull out the most extraordinary photographic exhibition we’ve ever seen. On almost any subject. The trouble is to find the things.

To make good photographs, to express something, to contribute something to the world he lives in, and to contribute something to the art of photography besides imitations of the best photographers on the market today, that is basic training, the understanding of self.

It is an error common to many artists, [who] strive merely to avoid mistakes, when all our efforts should be to create positive and important work. Better positive and important with mistakes and failures than perfect mediocrity.

What’s your Favorite Edward Steichen Quote?

Have a favorite Edward Steichen quote from the list? Let us know in the comment section below.

Don’t forget to bookmark this page, or print it out, and refer to it next time you need some inspiration. Also, don’t forget to share it with others through the usual channels (social media, forums, websites, etc).

To see more of Steichen’s timeless photography, check out his biography and image archive on the MoMA website.

Looking for more words of wisdom from master photographers? Visit the quotes section of Photogpedia for more great photography quotes.

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The post 30 Timeless Edward Steichen Quotes to Advance your Photography appeared first on Photogpedia.

If you haven’t done so already, we recommend reading our Horst P. Horst master profile article to learn more about his remarkable fashion, portrait and commercial photography work.

Horst P Horst Quotes

I like taking photographs because I like life. And I like photographing people best of all because most of all I love humanity.

You should find these things yourself. You should never copy, I never look at other photographers work. You have to see it for yourself.

All my best photos have a little bit of mess.

To get this shot, it took two days. It was the idea that counted then, not the sort of nervous rush they work in today.

Noel Coward taught me how to relax. He told me I shouldn’t worry because the subjects themselves were so frightened by the camera that they hardly saw me. That really loosened me up. But you can hide behind the camera – Clare Luce showed me that. She had been drawing on a piece of paper during our session. Afterward, I asked her what she’d been doing – and she’d drawn a sketch of me. That made me feel very self-conscious.

I don’t think photography has anything remotely to do with the brain. It has to do with eye appeal.

Fashion is an expression of the times. Elegance is something else again.

I was told that no model was to be photographed with her feet more than 12 inches apart, standing or walking. A photograph that I took of a girl sitting on the floor had to be retaken ‘because no lady sits on the floor.

[On his iconic corset photo] I left the studio at 4:00 a.m., went back to the house, picked up my bags, and caught the 7:00 a.m. train to Le Harve to board the Normandy… For me, this photograph is the essence of that moment. While I was taking it, I was thinking of all that I was leaving behind.

I had never photographed a corset before. It wasn’t easy. The light in the photo is more complex than you think. It looks as though there is only one light source. But there were reflectors and extra spotlights as well. I don’t know how I did it. I couldn’t repeat it. It was created by emotion.

[On portraits] I don’t make up my mind before, however, when I photograph them and something’s happening then you have to catch it and understand it. Try and bring it out. I don’t think we should photograph somebody with a pre-conceived idea… then it’s not the person.

It’s not how many or what kinds of lights you use, but how they are placed.

What’s your Favorite Horst P Horst Quote?

Have a favorite Horst P Horst quote from the list? Let us know in the comment section below.

Don’t forget to bookmark this page, or print it out, and refer to it next time you need some inspiration. Also, don’t forget to share it with others through the usual channels (social media, forums, websites, etc).

If you would like to learn more about Horst’s photography, we recommend reading our Horst P. Horst master profile article. To see more of his remarkable fashion photography work, check out the image archive on the Horst P. Horst Foundation website.

Looking for more words of wisdom from master photographers? Check out the quotes section of Photogpedia for more great photography quotes.

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If you haven’t done so already, we recommend reading our Herb Ritts master profile article to learn more about his incredible fashion and portrait photography, as well as his lighting technique, cameras and much more.

Herb Ritts Quotes

I like form and shape and strength in pictures.

Each time I did assignments or editorials, I realized that I wanted to do something more. I saw that it wasn’t just about the clothes.

The work with moving images is all part of the same proposition. The filmmaking can feed off the fine art photography; the fine art photography can nurture a commercial project.

To me it’s just going for the moment that counts. Sometimes, I’ll have all the elements there, and I like to play and push something, and to me, in the end, you do achieve things that you’re not aware of in the beginning, even though you’re there trying to get them.

I’m pretty selective. I generally edit the contact sheets and then do work prints. Because I have my own lab and printers, I can afford the luxury of going through the contact sheets for black-and-white, making up work prints, seeing them big, and honing them down.

Herb Ritts Quotes for Better Photography

I think a lot of the time these days people are so concerned about having the right camera and the right film and the right lenses and all the special effects that go along with it, even the computer, that they’re missing the key element. That element is developing a style that’s yours and experimenting with it until you eventually discover what makes sense to you.

You have to remember that the decisive moment is when you’re shooting. I’m not sure how it was in the past, but think, for example, of the moment when Cartier-Bresson captured that picture of the man bicycling in silhouette: That’s what he called the decisive moment, that’s the picture.

Feel your surroundings. Try and develop a style. Don’t get caught up in the technical side of things. Feel what is right in terms of light, subject, and composition. Dare to experiment, catch a moment.

You’re trying to get to one moment with one frame that eventually may speak for your generation.

Ritts on Lighting and Locations

Coming from California and growing up where I did, I’ve always had a fondness for and innate sensitivity to light, texture, and warmth.

Within two hours of where I live, you have mountains and desert as location. I like the natural elements that abstract into light, texture, shape and shadow

I abstract it in my photographs: I like large planes and spaces, areas of texture and light, like deserts or oceans or monumental places.

Herb Ritts Quotes on Portraits

I can have a given situation set up, but it’s catching that moment – allowing them to be themselves – and capturing something that’s special.

For me, a portrait is something from which you feel the person, their inner quality, what it is that makes them who they are. For instance, in the hand of the Dalai Lama donning his prayer beads in the window light; you feel his spirituality, his sense of presence.

The most interesting people to photograph are elderly. George Wallace, Bukowski, William Burroughs, Rauschenberg, Mandela. They’ve lived their lives. It’s all in their face, and it shows.

Today a lot of things are so celebrity-oriented; it’s only because it’s celebrity and the photograph is lost. To me it’s important to have an image that is a photograph first, not about necessarily who that person is.

Regardless of whether you speak the language or are familiar with a culture, the picture should hold up.

It’s not the celebrity quality of the person that makes the photograph interesting. It’s letting the true person through which makes the photograph interesting and lasting.

Learning the Craft Quotes

For me, the most important thing I learned was just honing my eye. I think I had a good eye.

I’d go down to the end of my street, to a garage that had a certain feeling about it, or a particular light; I’d take a picture of a friend who needed a head shot. That’s how I learned, instead of having school assignments and learning camera techniques.

I always enjoyed art history because, growing up in California, my exposure was limited, and it was a new experience. To learn the history of art opened up certain things to me, made me see. It intrigued me.

I exposed myself to museums. I suddenly saw, for instance, the vision of a Man Ray, discovered more and more the history of photography. It put things in perspective. But it was at least four years or more before I started feeling a sense of my own style.

To learn the history of art opened up certain things to me, made me see. It intrigued me.

Many people who excel are self-taught.

What’s your Favorite Herb Ritts Quote?

Have a favorite Herb Ritts quote from the list? Let us know in the comment section below.

Don’t forget to bookmark this page, or print it out, and refer to it next time you need some inspiration. Also, don’t forget to share it with others through the usual channels (social media, forums, websites, etc).

If you would like to learn more about Ritts’ photography, we recommend reading our Herb Ritts master profile article. To see more of his remarkable portraits and fashion photos, check out the image archive on the Herb Ritts Foundation website.

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More Quote Articles:

• Irving Penn Quotes
• Horst P Horst Quotes
• Peter Lindbergh Quotes
• 150+ Portrait Photography Quotes

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If you haven’t done so already, we recommend reading our Irving Penn master profile article to learn more about his legendary career and photography philosophy.

Irving Penn Quotes

I can get obsessed by anything if I look at it long enough. That’s the curse of being a photographer.

Make things manageable enough to record them, to prune away anything inconsequential… Because less is more.

The greatest privilege I’ve had in photography is a change of diet.

I feed on art more than I ever do on photographs. I can admire photography, but I wouldn’t go to it out of hunger.

Brodovitch was the first person to show me the mystical quality of photographs.

I myself have always stood in the awe of the camera. I recognize it for the instrument it is, part Stradivarius, part scalpel.

Using simple equipment and daylight alone is for me a pleasure and a replenishment.

I am a professional photographer because it is the best way I know to earn the money I require to take care of my wife and children.

Photographing a cake can be art too.

Whatever the photograph – a description of the battlefield, a portrait of a Hollywood celebrity, the turn of collar on the latest fashion, images for a small edition book, or images to sell soap – all of them are equally important.

A good photograph is one that communicates a fact, touches the heart, leaves the viewer a changed person for having seen it. It is, in a word, effective.

Penn on Portrait Quotes

I try to find a person at a very serene, true, and fairly restful moment.

In portrait photography, there is something more profound that we seek inside a person while being painfully aware that a limitation of our medium is that the inside is recordable only insofar as is apparent on the outside.

What I really try to do is photograph people at rest, in a state of serenity.

I am going to find what is permanent in this face. Truth comes with fatigue. He displays himself just as he is, just as he did not want to look.

We don’t call them shoots here. We don’t shoot people. It’s really a love affair.

I think we agree on one thing, that the important thing is to get past the public facade. The person who arrives at the studio, as everybody knows, armed with an image of himself, he’s prepared to tell you how he wants to be. He’s not going to say it in so many words, because for the most part, he’s a fairly sophisticated person, but he has a facade, he’s prepared, a certain id, and of external armor. The job of a photographer, working for a publication, and we work for similar circumstances, gives for the sake of the reader, to get past this facade.

Sensitive people faced with the prospect of a camera portrait put on a face they think is the one they would like to show the world. Very often what lies behind the façade is rare and more wonderful than the subject knows or dares to believe.

Most of the time the ones who dislike the pictures the most confirm to me that the picture has hit home and is probably truer than I know. Nobody minds a boring picture, they mind a picture that has gotten to the soft core.

Irving Penn Quotes on Fashion Photography

In 1952, Liberman said to me, I must cut back on the work you do for Vogue. The editors don’t like it. They say the photographs burn on the page. After some years, I began to understand that what they wanted of me was simply a nice, sweet, clean-looking image of a lovely young woman. I began to do that, and that’s when I became valuable to them and had 200 to 300 pages a year. Up to that point, I had been trying to make a picture. Then I began to try to make a commodity. That’s what I’ve been doing in fashion photography ever since.

I always thought we were selling dreams, not clothes.

Many photographers feel their client is the subject. My client is a woman in Kansas who reads Vogue. I’m trying to intrigue, stimulate, feed her. My responsibility is to the reader. The severe portrait that is not the greatest joy in the world to the subject may be enormously interesting to the reader.

A fashion picture is a portrait just as a portrait is a fashion picture.

The Master of Studio Photography

I found pictures trying to show peoples in their natural circumstances generally disappointing [but] feel secure in the artificial circumstances of the studio [accepting] for myself a stylization that I felt was more valid than a simulated naturalism

In the studio, too, I like it to be in no way grand. Nor do I feel grand, because I’m full of doubts still about the ability to get the picture I’m going to take.

I’ve tried a few times to depart from what I know I can do, and I’ve failed. I’ve tried to work outside the studio, but it introduces too many variables that I can’t control. I’m really quite narrow, you know.

I share with many people the feeling that there is a sweetness and constancy to light that falls into a studio from the north sky that sets it beyond any other illumination. It is a light of such penetrating clarity that even a simple object lying by chance in such a light takes on an inner glow, almost a voluptuousness.

Penn and the Print

Sometime in 1964, I realized that I was a victim of a printmaking obsession, a condition that persists today.

The printed page seems to have come to something of a dead end for all of us.

A beautiful print is a thing in itself, not just a halfway house on the way to the page.

Over the years I must have spent thousands of hours silently brushing on the liquid coatings, preparing each sheet in anticipation of reaching the perfect print.

What’s your Favorite Irving Penn Quote?

Have a favorite Irving Penn quote from the list? Let us know in the comments section below.

Don’t forget to bookmark this page, or print it out, and refer to it next time you need some inspiration. Also, don’t forget to share it with others through the usual channels (social media, forums, websites, etc).

If you would like to learn more about Irving Penn’s photography, we recommend reading our Irving Penn master profile article. To see more of Penn’s remarkable work, check out the image archive on the Irving Penn Foundation website.

Looking for more words of wisdom from master photographers? Check out the quotes section of Photogpedia for more great photography quotes.

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• Annie Leibovitz Quotes
• 150+ Portrait Photography Quotes

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If you would like to know more about Brandt’s remarkable photography, then check out our Bill Brandt master profile article, which covers everything from his photography style to printing techniques and much more.

The Best Bill Brandt Quotes

The photographer must first have seen his subject or some aspect of his subject as something transcending the ordinary. It is part of the photographer’s job to see more intensely than most people do. He must have and keep with him something of the receptiveness of the child who looks at the world for the first time or of the traveler who enters a strange country… they carry within themselves a sense of wonder.

If there is any method in the way I take pictures, I believe it lies in this. See the subject first. Do not try to force it to be a picture of this, that or the other thing. Stand apart from it. Then something will happen. The subject will reveal itself.

A photographer must be prepared to catch and hold on to those elements which give distinction to the subject or lend it atmosphere. They are often momentary, chance-sent things: a gleam of light on water, a trail of smoke from a passing train, a cat crossing a threshold, the shadows cast by a setting sun.

Sometimes they are a matter of luck; the photographer could not expect or hope for them. Sometimes they are a matter of patience, waiting for an effect to be repeated that he has seen and lost or for one that he anticipates.

Leaving out of question the deliberately posed or arranged photograph, it is usually some incidental detail that heightens the effect of a picture – stressing a pattern, deepening the sense of atmosphere. But the photographer must be able to recognize instantly such effects.

When I have seen or sensed – I do not know which it is – the atmosphere of my subject, I try to convey that atmosphere by intensifying the elements that compose it. I lay emphasis on one aspect of my subject and I find that I can thus most effectively arrest the spectator’s attention and induce in him an emotional response to the atmosphere I have tried to convey.

Bill Brandt Quotes on Photography Style

Towards the end of the war, my style changed completely. I have often been asked why this happened. I think I gradually lost my enthusiasm for reportage. Documentary photography had become fashionable. Everybody was doing it. Besides, my main theme of the past few years had disappeared; England was no longer a country of marked social contrast.

When you have done everything inside you, you cannot carry on unless you repeat yourself, and that’s not very interesting.

Photographers should follow their own judgment, and not the fads and dictates of others.

The good photographer will produce a competent picture every time whatever his subject. But only when his subject makes an immediate and direct appeal to his own interests will he produce work of distinction.

I did not always know just what it was I wanted to photograph. I believe it is important for a photographer to discover this, for unless he finds what it is that excites him, what it is that calls forth at once an emotional response, he is unlikely to achieve his best work… instinct itself should be a strong enough force to carve its own channel.

To achieve his best work, the young photographer must discover what really excites him visually. He must discover his own world.

Landscape Photography Quotes

To be able to take pictures of a landscape I have to become obsessed with a particular scene. Sometimes I feel that I have been to a place long ago, and must try to recapture what I remember.

When I have found a landscape which I want to photograph, I wait for the right season, the right weather, and right time of day or night, to get the picture which I know to be there.

Nude Photography Quotes

A good nude photograph can be erotic, but certainly not sentimental or pornographic.

When I began to photograph nudes, I let myself be guided by this camera, and instead of photographing what I saw, I photographed what the camera was seeing. I interfered very little, and the lens produced anatomical images and shapes which my eyes had never observed.

Brandt Portrait Quotes

I always take portraits in my sitter’s own surroundings. I concentrate very much on the picture as a whole and leave the sitter rather to himself.

[on color portraits] the results are always too soft, they lack impact. But I do think colour can improve a landscape, particularly when the colours are odd and incorrect. Colour is so much better when the hues are non-realistic.

In my portraits I try to avoid the fleeting expression and vivacity of a snapshot.

I think a good portrait ought to tell something of the subject’s past and suggest something of his future.

Bill Brandt Quotes on the Work

I hardly ever take photographs except on an assignment. It is not that I do not get pleasure from the actual taking of photographs, but rather that the necessity of fulfilling a contract-the sheer having to do a job-supplies an incentive, without which the taking of photographs just for fun seems to leave the fun rather flat.

I find that on an average I get three usable prints out of every spool… By temperament, I am not unduly excitable and certainly not trigger-happy. I think twice before I shoot and very often do not shoot at all. By professional standards I do not waste a lot of film; but by the standards of many of my colleagues, I probably miss quite a few of my opportunities. Still, the things I am after are not in a hurry as a rule.

It is essential for the photographer to know the effect of his lenses. The lens is his eye, and it makes or ruins his pictures. A feeling for composition is a great asset. I think it is very much a matter of instinct. It can perhaps be developed, but I doubt if it can be learned.

Printing and the Darkroom

I consider it essential that the photographer should do his own printing and enlarging. The final effect of the finished print depends so much on these operations. And only the photographer himself knows the effect he wants.

No amount of toying with shades of print or with printing papers will transform a commonplace photograph into anything other than a commonplace photograph.

Photography is still a very new medium and everything is allowed and everything should be tried. Photography has no rules. It is not a sport. It is the result which counts, no matter how it is achieved. And there are certainly no rules about the printing of a picture. Before 1951, I liked my prints dark and muddy. Now I prefer the very contrasting black-and-white effect. It looks crisper, more dramatic and very different from color photographs.

Brandt on Rules of Photography

I am not interested in rules and conventions … photography is not a sport. If I think a picture will look better brilliantly lit, I use lights, or even flash.

I am not very interested in extraordinary angles. They can be effective on certain occasions, but I do not feel the necessity for them in my own work. Indeed, I feel the simplest approach can often be most effective. A subject placed squarely in the centre of the frame, if attention is not distracted from it by fussy surroundings, has a simple dignity which makes it all the more impressive.

Most photographers would feel a certain embarrassment in admitting publicly that they carried within them a sense of wonder, yet without it they would not produce the work they do, whatever their particular field.

Photography is not a sport. It has no rules. Everything must be dared and tried!

What’s your Favorite Bill Brandt Quote?

Have a favorite Bill Brandt quote from the list? Know any other quotes from the master photographer that would make a great addition to the list? Let us know in the comment section below.

Don’t forget to bookmark this page, or print it out, and refer to it next time you need some inspiration. Also, don’t forget to share it with others through the usual channels (social media, forums, websites, etc).

If you would like to learn more about Bill Brandt’s photography, we recommend reading our Bill Brandt master profile article. To see more Brandt photos, then check out his image archive on the MoMA website.

Looking for more words of wisdom from master photographers? Check out the quotes section of Photogpedia for more great photography quotes.

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If you haven’t done so already, we recommend reading our Man Ray master profile article to learn more about his innovative photography, rayograph technique, cameras and much more.

Man Ray Quotes

Everything is related to photography, because it all has to be photographed in the end.

I have finally freed myself from the sticky medium of paint, and am working directly with light itself.

It was my goal to visualize the ancient layer of human memory with means of photography.

One of the satisfactions of a genius is his will-power and obstinacy.

Reality is fabricated out of desire.

Man Ray Quotes on the Work

My works were designed to amuse, annoy, bewilder, mystify and inspire reflection.

Were it not for the fact that photography permits me to seize and to possess the human body and face in more than a temporary manner, I should quickly have tired of this medium.

I paint what cannot be photographed, that which comes from the imagination or from dreams, or from an unconscious drive.

I photograph the things that I do not wish to paint, the things which already have an existence.

There is no progress in art, any more than there is progress in making love.

Don’t put my name on it. These are simply documents I make.

A book was once published of twenty photographs by twenty photographers, of the same model. They were as different as twenty paintings of the same model. Which was proof, once and for all, of the flexibility of the camera and its validity as an instrument of expression. There are many paintings and buildings that are not works of art. It is the man behind whatever instrument who determines the work of art.

Photography Process and Techniques

A camera alone does not make a picture. To make a picture you need a camera, a photographer and above all a subject. It is the subject that determines the interest of the photograph.

I worked fast. As soon as they walked in the door the camera would start clicking. No one knew how I did it. When they asked me I gave them wrong information.

An effort impelled by desire must also have an automatic or subconscious energy to aid its realization.

I was a great retoucher. A retoucher is an esthetic surgeon.

Just as I work with paints, brushes, and canvas, I work with the light, pieces of glass and chemistry.

Of course, there will always be those who look only at technique, who ask ‘how’, while others of a more curious nature will ask ‘why’. Personally, I have always preferred inspiration to information.

Quotes on Creativity, Inspiration and Ideas

It has never been my object to record my dreams, just the determination to realize them.

I never knew what I was doing until I was done.

A certain amount of contempt for the material employed to express an idea is indespensable to the purist realization of the idea.

I would photograph an idea rather than an object, a dream rather than an idea.

The streets are full of admirable craftsmen, but so few practical dreamers.

I do not photograph nature. I photograph my fantasy.

Some of the most complete and satisfying works of art have been produced when their authors had no idea of creating a work of art, but were concerned with the expression of an idea.

Nature does not create works of art. It is we, and the faculty of interpretation peculiar to the human mind, that see art.

I believe in the relation between photography and music; And thats my inspiration.

I have been accused of being a joker. But the most successful art to me involves humor.

An original is a creation motivated by desire. Any reproduction of an originals motivated be necessity. It is marvellous that we are the only species that creates gratuitous forms. To create is divine, to reproduce is human.

Man Ray on Camera Equipment

I am not going to be dictated to by the size of the camera. I use everything from an 8 x 10 to a 35-mm. But I don’t use these modern cameras which break down all the time.

[What type of camera he prefers to work with] None! I have to modify them all. My cameras are all of my own design. I take lenses apart and put them together again and put them on cameras that were not meant for them.

You don’t ask a writer what typewriter he uses.

Painting vs Photography

There are purists in all forms of expression. There are photographers who maintain that their medium has no relation to painting. There are painters who despise photography, although many in the last century have been inspired by it and used it. There are architects who refuse to hang a painting in their buildings maintaining that their own work is a complete expression.

[Do you prefer the brush over the lens for certain tasks? Or vice versa?] I am an economic person; I judge the amount of work involved with the amount of worth attained.

A photograph is to a painting what an automobile is to a horse. A rider on his horse is a beautiful thing, but I prefer a man in an airplane.

However rapidly I could paint, it was still drudgery after the instantaneous act of photography.

l paint what cannot be photographed, and l photograph what l do not wish to paint. lf it is a portrait that interests me, a face, or a nude, I will use my camera. It is quicker than making a drawing or a painting. But if it is something I cannot photograph, like a dream or a subconscious impulse I have to resort to drawing or painting.

To express what I feel I use the medium best suited to express that idea, which is also always the most economical one. l am not at all interested in being consistent as a painter, and object-maker or a photographer. I can use several different techniques, like the old masters who were engineers, musicians and poets at the same time.

I have never shared the contempt shown by painters for photography: there is no competition involved, painting and photography are two media engaged in different paths. There is no conflict between the two.

Is photography an art? There is no point in trying to find out if it is an art. Art is old-fashioned. We need something else.

I was very fortunate in starting my career as a painter. When first confronted with a camera, I was very much intimidated. So I decided to investigate. But I maintained the approach of a painter to such a degree that I have been accused of trying to make a photograph look like a painting. I did not have to try, it just turned out that way because of my background and my training.

Many years ago I had conceived the idea of making a painting look like a photograph! There was a valid reason for this. I wished to distract the attention from any manual dexterity, so that the basic idea stood out.

To me, a painter, if not the most useful, is the least harmful member of our society.

Critics, Experimentation and the Future

When I saw I was under attack from all sides, I knew I was on the right track.

All critics should be assassinated.

In the same spirit, when the automobile arrived, there were those that declared the horse to be the most perfect form of locomotion.

I like contradictions. We have never attained the infinite variety and contradictions that exist in nature. Tomorrow I shall contradict myself. That is the one way I have of asserting my liberty, the real liberty one does not find as a member of society.

A creator needs only one enthusiast to justify him.

The tricks of today are the truths of tomorrow!

What’s your Favorite Man Ray Quote?

Have a favorite Man Ray quote from the list? Let us know in the comment section below.

Don’t forget to bookmark this page, or print it out, and refer to it next time you need some inspiration. Also, don’t forget to share it with others through the usual channels (social media, forums, websites, etc).

If you would like to view more Man Ray photos, then check out his profile at MoMA or visit the Man Ray Trust 

Looking for more words of wisdom from master photographers? Check out the quotes section of Photogpedia for more great photography quotes.

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The post 46 Classic Man Ray Quotes on Photography and Art appeared first on Photogpedia.

In his six decade career, Penn was able to combine the precision of seeing with the invention of form.

Penn was not only an exceptional portraitist and a master of still life, but he was also a great innovator of fashion photography.

His fashion work bridged the gap between art and commerce and helped redefine the language of fashion photography in the process.

He shot a remarkable 165 cover photos for Vogue over sixty years – making him the most prolific photographer in the magazine’s history.

He was one of the first photographers to shoot against a simple plain background – a technique that is now used in every studio around the world.

Penn’s ability to use light, shadow, and space to produce still lifes and portraits that are both evocative and provocative is masterful.

In this article, we’ll be taking a closer look at the work of one of the great masters of twentieth-century photography, Mr. Irving Penn.

Related: 30 Brilliant Irving Penn Quotes to Bookmark

Editor note: If you find our Irving Penn profile helpful then we would be grateful if you could share it with others. Thanks for your continued support.

A good photograph is one that communicates a fact, touches the heart, leaves the viewer a changed person for having seen it. It is, in a word, effective.

Irving Penn

Irving Penn Biography

Name: Irving Penn
Nationality: American
Genre: Portrait, Fashion, Nudes, Still-life, Advertising, Travel
Born: 16 June 1917 – Plainfield, New Jersey
Died: 7 October 2009 (92 years old)

Early Career

Penn started his career as a designer before transitioning across to photography. He studied under Alexey Brodovitch at the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art (now the University of the Arts, Philadelphia) from 1934 to 1938.

Brodovitch recognized Penn’s talent and invited him to work at Harper’s Bazaar on some design projects during school vacations.

After graduating, Penn worked as a freelance designer in New York from 1938 to 1940. During this time, he purchased his first camera, a Rolleiflex, and wandered the streets of New York on weekends taking photographs. A few of his early images were printed as illustrations in Harper’s Bazaar.

From 1940 and 1941 he worked as an advertising designer for the Saks Fifth Avenue department store. However, the young Penn wished to explore the world and decided to head to Mexico in 1941. He traveled by train, on short trips across the southern United States.

In Mexico, Penn painted for a year in a studio in Coyoacán, a suburb of Mexico City, and took photographs. Dissatisfied with his paintings, though, he destroyed them and returned to New York.

Irving Penn and Vogue

In 1943, Penn was hired by Alexander Liberman, the art director of Vogue, as his assistant. Liberman recognized Penn’s photographic talent and urged him to pursue a career in photography.

Penn’s first cover, an elegant still-life, appeared in the October 1943 edition of the magazine. Penn would eventually photograph 165 covers for Vogue over sixty years.

During the war years, Penn served as an ambulance driver and photographer in the American Field Service with the British Army in India and Italy.

In 1948, following a photographic assignment for Vogue in Peru, Penn stayed behind to spend Christmas in the historic city of Cuzco. There he photographed the indigenous peoples, creating works that are simultaneously still-life’s and portraits.

Between Vogue assignments, Penn continued to experiment with his work. In 1949, he began photographing the female nude and created prints using a complex bleaching technique for the first time.

Penn married fashion model and muse Lisa Fonssagrives in 1950. His photographs of her frequently show her slim elegance, placed in the center of the frame with few props.

Finding his Style

Penn also worked on a series of “small trades” people. For the project, he visited New York, Paris, and London and photographed unrecognized tradespeople including young butchers, a coalman, a telegraph messenger, pastry cooks, and even a balloon seller, all posing formally in their work clothes and holding the tools of their trade.

It was this series that saw the genesis of what was to become characteristic of his portrait style: subjects posed against a plain background. He also placed his subjects in corner of the frame and lighted subjects from the side.

In the late ’60s, Penn put together a traveling studio for a series of ethnographic essays for Vogue. From 1967 to 1971, he traveled to Dahomey, Cameroon, Nepal, Morocco, and New Guinea. 

Penn used his signature style – plain background and a single source light – to photograph these ethnographic images, resulting in a unique body of work that looked completely different from anything seen before.

Penn’s mastery of still life and ability to transform everyday objects to the realm of art was particularly seen in an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1977. The museum exhibited photographs of twisted paper, a paper cup, and cigarette butts, which Penn printed using platinum paper.

Throughout his career, Penn photographed celebrities, politicians, and artists, including Alfred Hitchcock, Audrey Hepburn, Pablo Picasso, Grace Kelly, Henry Kissinger, Gore Vidal, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Yves St. Laurent.

Mature Period and Legacy

Penn’s creativity flourished during the last decades of his life. His studio in New York continued to be busy with advertising, magazine and personal work, as well as exhibition and print projects.

His innovative portraits, still life, fashion, and beauty photographs continued to appear in Vogue right up until the end of his life.

After the death of Lisa in 1992, Penn found solace in his work and in the structure of his studio schedule, and he would paint in his spare time. In 1997, he donated prints and archival material to the Art Institute of Chicago.

In 2009, Penn died in New York, at the age of 92. During his lifetime, he established The Irving Penn Foundation and published several books including Moments Preserved (1960), Passage (1991), Still Life (2001), and A Notebook at Random (2004)

His work has been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Art Institute of Chicago, the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and many more galleries. He was represented by Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York City.

Photography Style

• Master of studio photography
• Less is more, simplification and elimination
• Capturing authenticity
• Use of plain background, single color or theatre curtain
• Black and white for portraiture
• Color for beauty and still-life
• Use of conventional north light (single source sidelight: either natural, tungsten or strobe) 
• High contrast printing, a strong play between dark and light

Irving Penn worked across a variety of genres throughout his long career. In the next section, we’ll try to breakdown each genre and Penn’s working methods in more detail.

The greatest privilege I’ve had in photography is a change of diet.

Irving Penn

Portraiture

Penn’s distinctive style came from shooting his subjects in the studio and taking them out of their natural environment.

His subjects were posed against a plain background, typically a theater curtain found in Paris that he kept in his studio throughout his career.

Subjects are lighted from the side from either by window light or a single light source that is used to replicate the look of Penn’s favored northern light (see lighting section below.)

He applied the same approach whether he was photographing aborigine tribesmen, movie stars, or even the Hells Angels.

In portrait photography, there is something more profound that we seek inside a person while being painfully aware that a limitation of our medium is that the inside is recordable only insofar as is apparent on the outside.

Irving Penn

In the 1940s, Penn placed his sitters in a narrow corner space, which was created by angling two-stage flats to touch along their vertical edges. The set, both physically and psychologically confined the sitters, resulting in unique portraits.

Finding his Portrait Style

A decade later, Irving Penn adopted a new direct, close-up approach to photographing subjects. He used the same backdrop for all his portraits. He was a big believer in “simplification and elimination.”

Penn wanted his portraits to be both complete and profound, like the works of painters Goya, Daumier, and Toulouse-Lautrec who he greatly admired.

I feed on art more than I ever do on photographs. I can admire photography, but I wouldn’t go to it out of hunger.

Irving Penn

The reason Penn used a simple background was to isolate his subjects, so the images were free from distraction and surplus information. This allowed the viewer to concentrate on the subject and the subject only.

This may be the reason the majority of his portraits are black and white, as color tends to add another element within the frame that could potentially distract the viewer.

Sensitive people faced with the prospect of a camera portrait put on a face they think is the one they would like to show the world. Very often what lies behind the façade is rare and more wonderful than the subject knows or dares to believe.

Irving Penn

Fashion

Instead of shooting on location or using elaborate props like many early fashion photographers, Penn instead drew attention to the clothing and accessories and photographed models, as he did with his portraiture, isolated against simple backdrops.

Make things manageable enough to record them, to prune away anything inconsequential… Because less is more.

Irving Penn

As one of the first photographers to emphasize style over context, he helped to revolutionize the genre of fashion photography.

A fashion picture is a portrait just as a portrait is a fashion picture.

Irving Penn

Penn was infamous for making his models repeat the same gesture, movement, or position for an entire morning. When his models showed signs of fatigue, he would then get down to business.

I am going to find what is permanent in this face. Truth comes with fatigue. He displays himself just as he is, just as he did not want to look.

He was also known to take a lot of photographs – sometimes over a hundred rolls per photoshoot. His assistants were certainly kept busy.

It should also be noted that his studio was a calm and professional place of work – Penn was an artist painting with light. He had already sketched out the idea, had the image he wanted in his head, and now had to mount the image on film.

Former Vogue Editor-in-Chief Diana Vreeland once said: “Irving Penn’s studio is like a cathedral. David Bailey’s studio is like a nightclub.”

Nudes

Penn began photographing nudes in 1949 about the same time his career as a fashion photographer was established. His approach to nudes was completely different from his commercial work though.

He devised a technique of bleaching and re-developing each print to create high contrast areas that enhance the texture and volume of the image.

In terms of the images, his models are positioned either seated or lying down, and they are mostly tightly framed. He also used a lot of top light. There is a mysterious quality to his nude images, which makes them incredibly powerful.

Still Life

Penn’s fascination with still life is evident in the dramatic range of photography he has produced in this genre.

His first assignment as a Vogue studio photographer was a still-life cover, and over the years he completed many striking still-life product shots.

Penn began taking still-life photos of flowers in the 1960s. This led to a book of floral studies, Flowers, published in 1980. He said he was drawn to flowers considerably “after they’ve passed the point of perfection.”

In the 1970s, Penn continued the theme of visual imperfection and produced a series of still-life’s using memento mori objects (a reminder of the inevitability of death) such as cigarette butts, old clothing, and decaying fruit and vegetables.

He successfully challenged the traditional idea of what we consider beautiful, giving common street trash the full studio treatment. Ironically, these photographs are the antithesis of the consumer products Penn shot commercially.

Photographing a cake can be art too.

Irving Penn

What Camera Did Irving Penn Use?

• Rolleiflex
• Deardorff Large format view (4-by-5-inch and 8-by-10-inch models)
• Leica
• Nikon F
• Banquet Large Format

Penn purchased his first camera, a twin-lens medium format Rolleiflex around 1938 after graduating. He continued to use the same model right until the end of his career, some sixty years later.

For his studio work for Vogue, Penn frequently used a Deardorff large format view camera (both the 4×5 and 8×10 models).

Penn began using a 35mm Leica camera for his travel assignments for Vogue in 1950.

In the late 1950s, Penn switched from Leica to a Nikon, trading the rangefinder-style Leica camera for the newer single-lens reflex design and the telephoto lens.

In a burst of romantic passion for this new apparatus (forgetting gratitude to the Leica and with even a certain amount of disloyalty) I diverted myself of all our studios elaborate and superb Leica equipment, taking a terrible financial beating in the process, not finding a panacea and exchanging one set of headaches for another.

Irving Penn

Penn would later come to appreciate the flexibility of the new system and continue to use it for the rest of his career.

In 1979, Penn picked up a Banquet camera, a large format view camera, that was popular in the early twentieth century for taking group portraits in formal situations.

What Film Did Penn Use?

Penn mainly used Kodak black and white film for his portraits, either Super XX, Plus-X, or Tri-X (it seems any Kodak film with an X). For his fashion, beauty, and still-life photography he preferred to use color film.

After looking at my notes and reviewing his contact sheets it looks like he used both Fuji and Kodak for his color work. For his later studio photography, he used Kodak Ektachrome E200 slide-film.

In his book, World’s in a Small Room, Penn states that most of his photography in the book was shot on Kodak Tri-X and exposed at 160 ASA, or 80 to 125 ASA for very dark skins. Development was usually in Ethol UFG for 3 to 5 minutes at 68F.

Irving Penn Lighting Technique

Penn’s lighting would change depending on what genre of photography he was shooting and the location.

Below I’m going to try and cover Penn’s portrait lighting in detail (or as best as I can). His fashion photography would require another article.

Whenever possible, Penn would try and use natural north light, which is also favored by artists. This makes sense as he was heavily influenced by painters.

I share with many people the feeling that there is a sweetness and constancy to light that falls into a studio from the north sky that sets it beyond any other illumination. It is a light of such penetrating clarity that even a simple object lying by chance in such a light takes on an inner glow, almost a voluptuousness.

Irving Penn

In many of his pictures, the lighting is fairly directional and comes from one side, which creates a dramatic fall-off across the frame.

Penn makes everything extremely hard for himself. He employs no gadgets, no special props, nothing but the simplest lighting – probably a one-source light coming from the side of the sitter’s head.

Cecil Beaton, writing in 1975

Lighting Method

To achieve this, he used either window light or his portable studio. In his studio, he had floor to ceiling glass and large skylights installed.

If the light wasn’t strong enough (or there wasn’t any window light available) then he would augment the existing light or replicate window light with either tungsten, strobes, and even cheap hardware clamp lights. Whatever got the job done and gave him the quality of light he needed.

In my windowless New York studio, I designed a bank of tungsten to more or less simulate a skylight. The bank was constructed in a metal frame moved by hand pulley on a ceiling track. I found this to be an agreeable light for the formalized arrangements of people and still-life’s I meant to photograph. A drawback of course was the considerable heat of the bulbs and the long exposure times required. For still life’s, exposures could sometimes be hours long.

Irving Penn

Penn began experimenting with strobe lighting as early as 1952 when he was first introduced to the technology by colleague Leslie Gill.

He also used scrims, flags, drapes, mirrors, umbrellas, and reflectors to shape and control the light.

Editor note: If you have anything further you wish to add, specifically to do with Penn’s technique (lighting, printing, etc) then send us an email so we can update the article.

Platinum Printing Process

In 1964, Penn used the platinum/palladium printing process for the first time – a printing technique that was popular at the turn of the century.

The process involved applying platinum rather than silver on the printing paper. He would then expose and develop the negative then repeat until satisfied with the print.

After he perfected the technique, Penn went back and reprinted a lot of his earlier work.

Sometime in 1964, I realized that I was a victim of a printmaking obsession, a condition that persists today.

Irving Penn

Here is a short video from his former assistant that explains the technique:

Other Resources

Recommended Irving Penn Books

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• Irving Penn: Centennial
• Passage
• A Career in Photography

Irving Penn Videos

On Location in Morocco, 1971

The Portraits of Irving Penn – The Art of Photography

Irving Penn Photos

Looking for more Irving Penn photos? Then head over to the Irving Penn archive and The Met Museum.

Further Reading

Alexey Brodovitch Workshop Transcript – Conversation between Richard Avedon and Irving Penn from 1964 session. The legendary photographers discuss their photography style, projects, and commercial work.

Irving Penn Notebook – Copy of Penn’s notebook. Despite being difficult to read, it’s worth printing to help understand his process better.

The Art Institute of Chicago: Irving Penn Archives – Lots of great information about the master photographer that you won’t find anywhere else.

Fact Check

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Related Articles

• Richard Avedon: The Million Dollar Man
• Yousuf Karsh: The Master of Portrait Photography
• Horst P Horst: The Photographer of Style

Sources

Irving Penn is Difficult, Can’t you Tell, New York Times, 1991
Obituary, The Guardian, 2009
Irving Penn: Small Trades , The J Paul Getty Museum, 2009
Centennial, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2017
Irving Penn at the Met, Vogue, 2017
How Irving Penn ‘changed the way people saw the world, Christies, 2020
Celebrating the work of Irving Penn, The Guardian, January 2021

The Irving Penn Foundation
Irving Penn Archives, The Art Institute of Chicago

Richard Avedon and Irving Penn Workshop Transcript, 1964
Passage, Knopf, 1991
A Career in Photography, Bullfinch, 1997
Irving Penn: Centennial, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2017
Encyclopedia of Twentieth-century Photography, Routledge, 2005

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