What Penn's camera leaves out is always as important as what it includes. From omitting the fashion model from an early shoot (see his first Vogue cover, 1943) to eliminating the environment for the figure, his photographs use absence to stimulate appetite. Mr. Miyake with models in 1984. He was one of the first Japanese designers to show in Paris. Pierre Guillaud/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images He graduated in 1963 from Tama Art University in Tokyo, where he majored in design because fashion was not offered there as a course of study. Recent Acquisitions 2005: Some Versions of the Portrait, International Center of Photography, New York, March 11–June 5, 2005. I Platini di Irving Penn: 25 Anni di Fotografia (Irving Penn Platinum Plates: 25 Years of Photography), Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna, Turin, Italy, April–May 1975.

Irving Penn: Fringes, PaceWildesnteinMacGill Gallery, Los Angeles, March 15–April 20, 1996. Traveled to: Hamiltons Gallery, London, May 1–31, 1996. (Catalogue) I seem to be present at occasions of great social change,” he was quoted as saying in the 2017 book “Where Did Issey Come From?” by Kazuko Koike. “Paris in May ’68, Beijing at Tiananmen, New York on 9/11. Like a witness to history.” The Construction of the Other: The Archives of Imagination, a Selection from the Collection of the Fotomuseum Provincie Antwerp, Palais de Beaux-Arts/Bozar, Brussels, January 19–March 12, 2007. Buisine, Alain. "Irving Penn or the Object Sublimated." La Recherche Photographique 15 (Autumn 1993): 30–33. Irving Penn: Printemps des arts de Monte-Carlo. With essay by Edmonde Charles-Roux. Sporting d'Hiver de Monte Carlo, 1986.Grundberg, Andy. "Illusions of Immortality." Review of Passage. The New York Times Book Review (November 24, 1991): 1, 35. Mr. Miyake rarely discussed that day — or other aspects of his personal history — “preferring to think of things that can be created, not destroyed, and that bring beauty and joy,” he wrote in the essay. Irving Penn: Platinum Prints, Stephen Wirtz Gallery, San Francisco, Opened May 3, 1978. Traveled to: Gallery 700, Milwaukee, WI, 1981; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., June 19–October 2, 2005. Moments Preserved: Eight Essays in Photographs and Words. With introduction by Alexander Liberman. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960.

Long after Kuramata’s death, Miyake maintained the two shops he designed in the Aoyama neighborhood as a silent tribute. “When we began working in early 1960s, Japan was at the height of its post-WWII economic recovery,” Miyake said in a statement on the occasion of the 2011 exhibition Shiro Kuramata Ettore Sottsass. “Kuramata was a heroic presence to me, even within a group comprised of so many formidable talents. His use of materials, for example: No matter what it was, he transformed it into an attractive design that we had never seen before. We all deeply respected Kuramata both in terms of his work and as a person. Japanese design is tight and rational and has no unnecessary elements. But Kuramata’s work was filled with mystery, a world that we are not ordinarily capable of expressing. My work might have been different had I never met him.” During the 1970s, Miyake identified Kuramata as an important new talent and asked him to design the Issey Miyake shop in the From–1st Building in Tokyo in 1976. Kuramata proposed laying garments out on flat surfaces and designed a table made of aluminum honeycomb sheet with a timber surface that cantilevered out of the wall and appeared to be floating with no visible means of support. His shop for Bergdorf Goodman used terrazzo extensively, while the Paris shop used walls draped with fabric. Over a decade and a half, Kuramata designed more than 100 interiors for Miyake. After his return to New York in 1946, Penn worked with other fashion and home magazines as well as Vogue, juggling fashion, portraiture, and ethnographic photography. Photographing indigenous peoples in their natural surroundings had long been a dream of Penn's. On Vogue's dime, he travelled to Spain, Peru, Bangladesh, Hawaii, Manila, The Philippines, India, and other exotic locations for fashion shoots. On these occasions, he also completed personal projects.Tváří v tvář (Face to Face: The F.C. Gundlach Collection), Langhans Galerie, Prague, Czech Republic, September 30–December 4, 2004. Slonim, Jeffrey. "Happy Birthday to Irving Penn, The Photographer Whose Images Have Lit Up The World." Interview (June 1995): 32.

Irving Penn: Le Noir et Blanc légitimé, Galerie Thierry Marlat, Paris, November 3, 2011–January 12, 2012.Irving Penn: Photographs in Platinum Metals—Images 1947–1975, Marlborough Gallery, New York, NY, September 9–October 11, 1977. Traveled to: Salt Lark Art Center, Salt Lake City, Utah, November 2–December 2, 1979; Marlborough Gallery, London, May 20–June 20, 1981. Penn, Irving. Irving Penn: New and Unseen – Process (exhibition catalogue). New York: Pace/MacGill Gallery, 1999. Penn, Irving and Diana Vreeland. Inventive Paris Clothes, 1909-1939: a Photographic Essay. London: Thames and Hudson, 1977. Photography in the Twentieth Century, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, February 1967. Traveled to Canada, July 30, 1967­–February 18,1968. Penn's earliest series of photographs chronicles an early cross-country voyage through the American South. Penn was not yet thinking of himself as an art photographer. He had fled the fashion industry and planned to settle in the South as a folk artist. In retrospect, however, these documentary images in the spirit of the great Walker Evans foreshadow Penn's ultimate destiny as an equally great American photographer, but in a vein fundamentally at odds with photojournalism. This photograph is also known by the title Sign with Child's Head Missing, Louisiana. It is an odd photograph, one almost certainly deliberately and carefully staged. On the hood of a beat-up car sits a framed image that once hung in a diner or a hardware store, advertising a product. The original advertisement has been damaged, so that the central subject - a baby - is missing its head. A couple gazes adoringly at their decapitated child, and the whole scene is positioned so as to appear as if it is taking place inside the car. On the horizon are the columns and roofs of a traditional southern home. An American Dream turned nightmare, the image foretells Penn's subversive approach to image-making. It also expresses some of the anxiety Penn may have been feeling as an outsider (the child of Russian Jewish immigrants) traveling through the Deep South.