Irving Penn

Photographing a cake can be art.

— Irving Penn

I am a professional photographer because it is the best way I know to earn the money I require to take care…

— Irving Penn

A beautiful print is a thing in itself, not just a halfway house on the way to the page.

— Irving Penn

I share with many people the feeling that there is a sweetness and constancy to light that falls into a studio from…

— Irving Penn

I feed on art more than I ever do on photographs. I can admire photography, but I wouldn't go to it out…

— Irving Penn

Sometime in 1964 I realized that I was a victim of a printmaking obsession, a condition that persists today.

— Irving Penn

Liberman said to me, 'I must cut back on the work you do for Vogue. The editors don't like it. They say…

— Irving Penn

Many photographers feel their client is the subject. My client is a woman in Kansas who reads Vogue. I'm trying to intrigue,…

— Irving Penn

Working on photography is working on oneself.

— Irving Penn

I've tried a few times to depart from what I know I can do, and I've failed. I've tried to work outside…

— Irving Penn

A good photograph is one that communicates a fact, touches the heart and leaves the viewer a changed person for having seen…

— Irving Penn

Over the years I must have spent thousands of hours silently brushing on the liquid coatings, preparing each sheet in anticipation of…

— Irving Penn

In portrait photography there is something more profound that we seek inside a person, while being painfully aware that a limitation of…

— Irving Penn

I can get obsessed by anything if i look at it long enough. That's the curse of being a photographer.

— Irving Penn

What I really try to do is photograph people at rest, in a state of serenity.

— Irving Penn

Sensitive people faced with the prospect of a camera portrait put on a face they think is one they would like to…

— Irving Penn

Using simple equipment and daylight alone is for me a pleasure and a replenishment.

— Irving Penn

Most of the time the ones who dislike the pictures the most confirm to me that the picture has hit home and…

— Irving Penn

The printed page seems to have come to something of a dead end for all of us.

— Irving Penn

Sensitive people faced with the prospect of a camera portrait put on a face they think is the one they would like…

— Irving Penn

I myself have always stood in the awe of the camera. I recognize it for the instrument it is, part Stradivarius, part…

— Irving Penn

The severe portrait that is not the greatest joy in the world to the subject may be enormously interesting to the reader.

— Irving Penn

I have always stood in awe of the camera. I recognize it for the instrument it is, part Stradivarius, part scalpel.

— Irving Penn

I always thought we were selling dreams, not clothes

— Irving Penn