The established and well-known American photographer Irving Penn was born in 1917. For 60years he had worked for Vogue as a commercial photographer and he dealt with exceptional quality a variety of genres including still life, portraiture and fashion photography.

Irving Penn has been working with the ‘flower’ genre for over forty years. He examines and captures the biological wonder of each specimen elegantly and gracefully. Irving Penn’s flowers are statements of fact. He captures the images as much as the lens can record with sincerity and honesty. Each stem, petal and stamen is recorded as if taken by an X-ray.

Irving Penn’s flowers are displayed with striking clarity and precision. Beyond this display of clarity there are moments in each composition where Penn’s objective study becomes poetic contemplation. The compositional beauty and the completeness of the print depict the subjects found at the penultimate moment before their expiration. The capturing of these moments speaks to us about mortality itself.