Irving Penn – Centennial (Fashion Studies)

The amazon look inside feature shows you the contents here, so you can see that it spans a lot of Penn's different work (nudes, fashion, portraits, still lifes etc). Most of the photographs are in black and white.What is spectacular about this book is the quality. The pages are printed on thick high quality paper (I own many other books from the likes of Taschen/Rizzoli etc) and this paper is the thickest stock I have seen. The print quality is excellent, the book is very heavy and well made. The layout it clean and neat (one picture a page) and it is really well put together. Highly recommended and worth the price.

I’ve always rated Penn as one of the worlds finest studio photographers and have always wanted his book, Worlds in a Small Room, now too expensive for me to buy.Centennial is a compendium of Penn’s work that covers all of his genres and is just affordable! It’s very big, and it’s very heavy so make sure you can support it when you look at it. Centennial is beautifully printed on very high quality paper, and the images look superb.The book is divided into separate chapters, each with a short essay of introduction, most very informative.Each chapter covers a different subject and there are at least 20 plates per chapter. Chapters include In Vogue, Cuzco, Nudes, Small Trades, Ethnographic Portraits, (my favourites) and Still Life.Most images are printed one per page. There are some pages with multiple images but they still look superb.As for value for money, compared with the individual books of Penn’s that are now so expensive, this compendium of his work is an affordable way to appreciate this great photographer.I would highly recommend this book to anyone who loves the studio portrait.

There are several nudes, between pages 150-160, which appear bleached (no detail on the lightest areas, but detail on mid and dark tones - just looks substandard and it doesn't work aesthetically). It's unclear if it's due to book printing issues or due to the film negatives themselves. Either way, they shouldn't have been included. Also, there are several pages with images of burnt cigarette butts which are fairly repetitive and boring. The bad prints and the repetitive images should have been edited out.

A wonderful book of Irvines best photos and an excellent guide to his work. Very large and beautifully printed - though not sure how close the tonal range is for the Platinum Palladium work.A must for any respecting photographers library

This is definitely worth the money. It is fantastic. Not some book with pictures for your coffee table. This is a book to read and take time over. However you will need to sit at a table to do so as it is super heavy to hold and read.What a photographer!