展品专文
Classically modest
and charming, Café in Lima represents a major turning point
in fashion photography at Vogue as well as an important
moment in Irving Penn’s illustrious fashion career. Taken only a few years
into his time at the magazine, Penn was still developing his signature style
and exploring new ways in which to portray the latest fashions to Vogue’s audience.
For this spread, Penn and his model traveled to Peru at the suggestion of art
director Alexander Liberman, engaging with the culture and day to day life of
the region to create a romantic and realistic images filled with a sense of
wanderlust.
Similar to his contemporary Richard Avedon, Penn adopted the postwar trend of
showing his model unposed while shooting on location in Peru. The model for
the image, Jean Patchett, even recalled that the final image was captured
while she was entirely off guard saying, 'We flew 3,200 miles and after we
got there, a week went by and Mr. Penn still hadn't used his camera. I
started getting nervous about it. Every day I got up and got dressed but he
never took a picture. Finally one day we found this little café, and there
was a young man sitting across from me, and I was getting frustrated. So I
just sort of said to myself to heck with this and I picked up my pearls and I
kicked off my shoes. My feet were hurting. And he said 'Stop!'' (Angeletti
and Oliva, In Vogue, Rizzoli, 2006, p. 147.)
The trip and the resulting images published in the February 1949 issue of
Vogue would turn out to be the only fashion story that Penn shot entirely on
location during his tenure at the magazine. By 1950, Penn would settle into
his sunlit studio sessions that would become a staple of the magazine’s
reportage of each season’s newest designer collections. A remnant of the
early years of Penn’s career, Café in Lima remains a
delightful and iconic image in the history of fashion photography.
and charming, Café in Lima represents a major turning point
in fashion photography at Vogue as well as an important
moment in Irving Penn’s illustrious fashion career. Taken only a few years
into his time at the magazine, Penn was still developing his signature style
and exploring new ways in which to portray the latest fashions to Vogue’s audience.
For this spread, Penn and his model traveled to Peru at the suggestion of art
director Alexander Liberman, engaging with the culture and day to day life of
the region to create a romantic and realistic images filled with a sense of
wanderlust.
Similar to his contemporary Richard Avedon, Penn adopted the postwar trend of
showing his model unposed while shooting on location in Peru. The model for
the image, Jean Patchett, even recalled that the final image was captured
while she was entirely off guard saying, 'We flew 3,200 miles and after we
got there, a week went by and Mr. Penn still hadn't used his camera. I
started getting nervous about it. Every day I got up and got dressed but he
never took a picture. Finally one day we found this little café, and there
was a young man sitting across from me, and I was getting frustrated. So I
just sort of said to myself to heck with this and I picked up my pearls and I
kicked off my shoes. My feet were hurting. And he said 'Stop!'' (Angeletti
and Oliva, In Vogue, Rizzoli, 2006, p. 147.)
The trip and the resulting images published in the February 1949 issue of
Vogue would turn out to be the only fashion story that Penn shot entirely on
location during his tenure at the magazine. By 1950, Penn would settle into
his sunlit studio sessions that would become a staple of the magazine’s
reportage of each season’s newest designer collections. A remnant of the
early years of Penn’s career, Café in Lima remains a
delightful and iconic image in the history of fashion photography.