Fashion photographer Irving Penn has died. A 2007 New York Times article on “the Jewish eye” in photography said that Penn did “not fit the profile of the nervous outsider,” and was therefore not firmly associated with his Jewishness. Rather, says the Times obit today, he was known for his “compositional clarity and economy” and was “most famous for photographing Parisian fashion models and the world’s great cultural figures, but he seemed equally at home photographing Peruvian peasants or bunion pads.” As the “photographer with the longest tenure in the history of Condé Nast” (he was most associated with Vogue), Penn portrayed the Hell’s Angels as “the graphic equivalent of a Greek frieze,” and typically depicted his subjects “enjoying a splendid isolation from the real world.” He was 92.
Hadara Graubart was formerly a writer and editor for Tablet Magazine.