Irving Penn at the Grand Palais: the genius reveals himself at night to Say Who’s friends

This is without a doubt the exhibition of the year. Inaugurated on 21 September, the Irving Penn retrospective at the Grand Palais has already fed the pages of the entire press. One of the greatest photographers of the 20th century, celebrated for his collaboration with the magazine Vogue (whose longevity of sixty years still fascinates), Irving Penn reveals himself in all the diversity of his work through this tribute exhibition. If these portraits of great names like Alfred Hitchcock, Marlene Dietrich or Pablo Picasso are engraved in the memories, we know less his series devoted to cigarettes or his many sketches. While the opening of the exhibition had brought together the great names of art, from Jean Pigozzi to William Klein, the queue was not empty. After only a few days of opening, RMN-Grand Palais entrusted Say Who with the task of inviting a handful of privileged people to discover the exhibition in an intimate setting, then to meet around a glass to exchange their impressions hot. Among them, Simon Buret and Olivier Coursier, the two halves of AaRON, the designer Yasmine Eslami, Mathias Kiss or the pretty Alice Aufray.