IRVING PENN – CIGARETTES
2014-04-14This exhibition will feature approximately 16 images from the Cigarettes series, which he made during a fertile period that also produced his most spectacular still life photographs. The series was also the first that Penn presented as platinum palladium prints.
“In 1972, he produced a series of photographs of cigarette butts… [which] had been smoked down to the end then discarded. He placed one, two or three of these on a white background and photographed them using a large-format camera. The prints were made in the platinum-palladium process that provides a rich tonal range, showing clearly the dirt, wrinkles, mud and dust that disfigured them. The elegance of these pictures is similar to that which we find in his pictures for Chanel’s cologne for men, for Clinique’s lipstick or in brightly colored still lifes of flowers. Whether the subject be cigarette butts or high fashion, they find equivalence through the elegance of Penn’s technique.”
– Michiko Kasahara, excerpted from an essay published in Irving Penn Photographs (Wildenstein Tokyo, 1997)
Opposite – “Cigarette No. 17” New York, 1972/1975
Exhibition runs through to April 19th, 2014
Taka Ishii Gallery Photography / Film
5-17-1 2F Roppongi Minato-ku
Tokyo #106-0032
Japan
