Irving Penn in the Grand Palais

Irving Penn’s name puts stars in the eyes of anyone interested in photography and fashion from near or far. A great photographer of the 20th century, this American, whose career was almost as long as his life was, left behind him an exceptional work that we cannot help but compare to the painter’s work. As 2017 marks the centenary of his birth, the Grand Palais is devoting a major exhibition to him in partnership with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. If his photographs for Vogue magazine (for which he worked for sixty years!) have entered the collective memory, we cannot ignore his nude work, his still lifes and, of course, his incomparable portraits. Penn’s signature is the unequalled intimacy he creates with his models. Thus the exhibition pays a vibrant tribute to the photographer and his prolific work, which the privileged few invited by the Grand Palais were able to discover during its inauguration. Among them, one could meet the collector Jean Pigozzi, the photographer William Klein or the gallery owner Emmanuel Perrotin and his companion Lorena Vergani, all gathered around the exhibition curator Jérôme Neutres. Not to be missed under any circumstances.