A revealing look at photographer, portraitist

HOLBEIN & ENGLAND: A FASCINATING PORTFOLIO OF THE MEN & WOMEN OF TUDOR ENGLAND, Susan Foister, Yale University Press, $65, hardback, 40 color plates, 180 black and white, 288 pp.

In a career that spans more than 50 years, Irving Penn (1917-) has created some of the most arresting portraits, influential fashion studies and provocative still lifes of the 20th Century. With the recent publication of "Irving Penn: The Platinum Prints," Yale University Press — in association with the National Gallery of Art — has given readers the opportunity to experience the photographs of one of our nation's master craftsmen and pre-eminent visual artists.

While most of Penn's work was undertaken for reproduction in magazines, in the early 1960s, after becoming disenchanted with the printing quality of his work, he began producing a limited number of platinum/palladium prints of his most celebrated photographs. Using a process that required a meticulous eye and extensive experimentation, Penn eventually produced prints that were remarkably subtle, with rich tonal ranges and luxurious textures.

In her opening essay on Penn, author Sarah Greenough, curator and head of the department of photography at the National Gallery of Art, expressed that the photographer is an intense man with a quiet dedication to his art. "Penn did not merely lament the decline of the publishing industry, instead he refocused his priorities, embarked on a multiyear research project to learn more about the long-forgotten technique of platinum printing," and in the end redefined the nature of his art.

Greenough touches quickly on Penn's complex relationship with Alexander Liberman, the art director of Conde Nast, and how their falling out — Liberman began using the photographer Richard Avedon almost exclusively — encouraged Penn to rethink his art. She also presents a short history of other alternative printing techniques that became popular in the 1960s and '70s.

Reinterpreting his photographs through platinum printing allowed Penn to reclaim his work as his own. "As he did so," said Greenough, "he transformed them into the independent works of art that have been celebrated for the last 30 years."

The quality of the book's printed pages will excite readers; it's as if we are actually seeing the photographs as Penn would have them be seen.

For anyone interested in the art of photography, this is a must-purchase.