Retrospective …

… The Puzzle of Irving Penn | by Martin Filler | NYR Daily | The New York Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Though I found the majority of the Met selections familiar, some of the most thrilling ones were not, including lesser known examples from what I consider Penn’s career peak: his 1948 portraits of Peruvian Indians in Cuzco, where he’d gone to shoot American fashion models for Vogue. There he discovered local residents, including two Quechuan men possessed of such innate dignity that they might have stepped out of a Mantegna fresco, and immortalized them with what can only be called pure genius.