Irving Penn: Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery, review

By Lucy Davies Published: 1:36PM GMT 03 March 2010

Truman Capote, New York, 1948 by Irving Penn Photo: � THE IRVING PENN FOUNDATION

The mixture were elementary and constant. A hurl of paper, dual theatre flats, a stool, a square of carpet, a Rolleiflex camera, a tilt-all tripod. Yet someway he never steady himself.

He favourite the illumination best, and spoke of the "sweetness… tasty over any alternative illumination". He cajoled it, let it den in to askew eyelid, tooth enamel, chin bristle, the liquid that settles in the corners of an eye socket.

Irving Penn: copied but never outdone Andre Kertesz at the Photographers Gallery - examination Blanc & Demilly: the Window of surprises at Rathbone Gallery, examination Deutsche B?rse 2009 at the Photographers Gallery, examination Genre Reviews: photography books A Face to the World: On Self-Portraits by Laura Cumming: examination

It is not probable to have a suggestive contention about portraiture but referring to Irving Penn. He photographed so majority heading total that he became a hulk in between them. Some 120 of his portraits are on show at the National Portrait Gallery. Half a century on, they are as electrifying as ever. "I contingency cut behind on the work you do for Vogue," his editor, Alexander Liberman, said. "They dont similar to it. They contend the photographs bake on the page."

All of Penns work takes the same approach: isolating subjects from their context and raising them to striking perfection. He spoke of a need "to shear afar anything inconsequential". The NPG aspires to his neatness, with a singular line of faces in sequential order, permitting us to conclude the inclination he used to bleed the responses. He was a master of such devices. The majority viewable was the backdrop he began utilizing from 1951, that assimilated dual theatre flats to emanate a slight corner. Liberman likened it to the "tormenting siege of Beckett" but Penn found "this capture seemed to joy people, balmy them. The walls were a aspect to gaunt on or pull against".

Seeing multiform images in discerning period points to alternative tricks. Geometric shapes form clever lines that action as arrows, interlude the eyes from erratic about. And he was a stickler for printing, devoting hours to gold palladium coatings. Worth it, you see, when the range of blacks it afforded authorised his virtuoso or grey to action as pillow for sable hues that siphon your gawk inward. When you see this show, remember: each design has a crux, something that all else exists to complement. The gist was his sitters essence: "more singular and smashing than the theme knows or dares to believe".

Penns methods for extracting it were severe: "What does it feel similar to to realize that this eye seeking at you is the eye of 1,200,000 people?" he is pronounced to have asked one sitter. If this seems rather chilling, take heart from the results. Its as if all the nuances a face has voiced have been strong in to one shot. A handful of sitters aria brazen to encounter the lens. Others gaunt behind ingeniously or protrusion their chins in defiance.

Liberman was right, the images are indelible. Seared on to my minds eye are, in no sold order: the mud underneath Richard Burtons nails; the food in between John Updikes teeth; Edward Albees eyelashes; the persperate topping Anaïs Nins top lip; and the actuality that one side of Henry Moores face seems sadder than the other. Each takes the magnitude whilst permitting us to take theirs, too. And theyre so lifelike, you half design them to blink.

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