At the same time, I have been looking through a book of the photography of Jeanloup Sieff another renowned fashion photographer from the 50s to the 90's "40 years of photography". Professionally both were fashion photographers working for Vogue - Paris, Harpers Bazaar - New York, Queen, Elle and so on.
It is interesting to compare the style of the two photographers. Several celebrities were taken by both photographers e.g. Alfred Hitchcock and Rudolph Nureyev.
My notes on Irving Penn included:-
- Portraits were taken mostly in a bare studio or room in black and white.
- In the later years his portraits were predominantly head and shoulders whereas in the early years most portraits were full length.
- The photographs were almost all taken at eye level.
- With a few exceptions, the photographs were in a square frame.
- He used background light and shadow to create a halo around the head and body, with strong sidelighting. For male subjects, he rarely seemed to add any light to the shaded side of the face/body.
- He often seemed to exaggerate the physical attributes of his subject: Men with prominent noses were taken in profile or using a short focal length e.g. Saul Below, Jacques Yves Cousteau. Alfred Hitchcock was posed sideways sitting down so that the looked as short and fat as possible. Audrey Hepburn seemed to have been photographed with a short focal length that exaggerated her snub nose. Francis Bacon was taken with a short focal length looking up in a way that exaggerated his broad lower face.
Jeanloup Sieff has quite a different style.
- Also, photographs in the book were selected by Jeanloup Sieff himself. They include a mix of subjects, but fashion and portraits of friends and celebrities predominate.
- The photographs are all in black and white. Most are framed in a portrait shape (shape of magazine page?) or square frames.
- For many photographs, he ingeniously uses a frame within a frame to attract the viewer to the subject. The subject is often framed by a window or door in a building, vehicle, roof. I particularly liked a photograph of Francois Truffaut where he uses an umbrella to frame the sitter. In some photos, he even uses a person in the foreground in shadow to form the frame for the mannequin behind. The photograph is taken from a variety of angles to create the "frame" for the subject.
- The presentation of images in the book also take account of contrasts with juxtaposition of personal and impersonal portraits, curves and straight lines, lightness and taughtness of a ballet dancers physique.
Jeanloup's photographs of Alfred Hitchcock and Rudolf Nureyev place them in the context of their professional role, in contrast to Irving Penn where portraying their physical attributes seems to be the prime objective.
From the viewpoint of photographing ordinary local people when on holiday, Jeanloup's style appears to be the most appropriate.
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