It’s been 20 years coming, but finally it’s Berlin’s turn: For the occasion of what would have been Irving Penn’s 100th birthday, C/O Berlin is exhibiting a retrospective comprising 240 of the luminary’s photographs. Penn was a master at positioning his subjects with great attention to detail. The exhibited works continue to inspire, and the faces they depict belong to great artists and stars of classic Hollywood cinema: Marlene Dietrich, Audrey Hepburn, Pablo Picasso. Other series are less well known, depicting objects such as the cigarette butts that Penn collected from the streets of New York with archival enthusiasm. He applied the same artistic standards to these unlikely subjects as he did to the models of his nude photographs. These brazenly depict the female body in a close-up, straightforward manner with a naturalness that subverted the photographic standards of the time. Works which were viewed with scorn by critics at the time have since cemented their status as masterpieces. Curated by New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in collaboration with The Irving Penn Foundation, this exhibition is accompanied by a program that invites visitors to embrace their own artistic side with events such as a life drawing class on 11.4.2018. (Text: Jennifer Prietzel / All photos: Irving Penn, c/o (clockwise, L-R:) Condé Nast / The Irving Penn Foundation / The Irving Penn Foundation)
C/O Berlin, Hardenbergstr.22-24, 10623 Berlin-Tiergarten; map
Mon-Sun 11-20h
Irving Penn – Centennial, through 1.7.2018. Events program.
