Irving Penn, Photographer (MP6)

In the summer of 2016, the Dallas Museum of Art had an exhibit featuring the photography of Irving Penn, called Beyond Beauty. I had the pleasure of viewing that exhibit, and I thought it was incredible.

Irving Penn spent a time working for Vogue and, as a result, focused much of his photography on fashion. His photographs are brilliant and striking. He did not simply shoot the newest trends. Instead, he focused on the form and architecture of fashion. Take this photo for example:

Issey Miyaki Seaweed Dress, New York, 1987
© The Irving Penn Foundation

The photo is so interesting because you see the craft behind the dress and the unique way it moves. It goes beyond the runway.

Another thing Penn did when taking photos was look for unique angles and ways to look at the world.

Eye in Keyhole, New York, 1953 

© Condé Nast

This is one of my favorites. Penn also took "beauty" pictures for the magazine, and he strived to take photos that would stop someone in their tracks. This particular photo is well framed. The reflection of the keyhole in the eye is right on the pupil. There is certainly beauty here - human eyes are quite beautiful and natural. It goes beyond that, though. It is so much more interesting than just an eye. I could stare at it for hours.

One of Penn's main jobs at Vogue was to take portraits of celebrities and others featured in the magazine. Penn was not about to take ordinary, boring portrait. He made sure to capture the subject's personality in each portrait. Take the following portrait:

Miro and his Daughter, Dolores, Tarragona, Spain, 1948
© The Irving Penn Foundation

What a beautiful picture of a father-daughter bond. There would be so much less personality if he had simply captured a typical head shot of Joan Miro, a painter. His daughter is not him, but she is an important part of him, so why not include her?

I personally, love this last category of photos Penn took. Some were taken for Vogue, some were personal projects. They are still lives. Penn had the incredible ability to take the most boring, mundane objects and turn them into art. They are all beautiful, but there is a particularly interesting project he did where he took trash from the streets of New York City and photographed it. How can someone make litter look like art? Take a look.

Cigarette No. 17, New York, 1972
© The Irving Penn Foundation

I mean come on. Those are just cigarettes he found on the street, but he put them in the right light and added the right contrast to make them look incredible. Penn was able to take the most boring things and turn them into the most amazing photographs. It is incredible.

Penn is definitely and inspiration, and, although I will not be able to achieve the same level of talent in my unit 3 project, I do plan to keep his art in mind while I am working on it.

If you want to see more, go to https://irvingpenn.org/ and look under "ARTWORK." There are so many more amazing photos to see and each one is unique and beautiful.

Images

This class is called "Multimedia Authoring: Image and Hypertext." One might assume that images are an important component of this class and the projects we do in it, and they'd be correct. One of the challenges I have faced in my unit 2 project is finding and taking the right pictures to put on my website to help my argument.

I can easily go around TCU and find images that back up my claims about TCU, but it is harder to illustrate my vision for the future. Fortunately I have a wonderful sister living at a university that has exactly the sort of bike-friendly things that I envision TCU having. She has sent me some really cool images to add to my site. She attends Colorado State University and the campus is cool. It's super cool that I have these images that can show my audience what other universities are doing.

My main reason for writing this particular blog post is to share these super cool images from CSU. I love how bike friendly the campus it. It is so cool. I hope that my enthusiasm for these images is something my audience feels as well. I definitely think images are beyond important when it comes to persuasion.

Coding

Coding is frustrating.

I think being able to code (or write HTML and CSS, as the case may be) is a valuable skill in the world we live in, especially for those looking into the writing field. But... it's hard. I don't understand the language. I don't know what words to use. I have a picture in my mind of what I want my webpage to look like, but I cannot bring it to life because I don't have the coding expertise necessary.

Dreamweaver makes things a little less difficult by allowing you to simply insert things into the page while it adds the code for you. That's nice, but you still have to figure out how to get it where you want it to go and how to color it a certain way and how to get words on it and how to get the words to look the way you want.

I wish I could say I knew what this meant.

I persevere. My final project will resemble the website in my head. I like a good challenge and this certainly is one.