As Told in “Monk With a Camera,” How Did Irving Penn’s Photography Contribute to Vreeland’s Style?
Nicholas Vreeland was born into a family where photography was important. Early in Monk With a Camera (2014), we learn that when Nicholas was fifteen, the work of Irving Penn spoke to him more than any other. Penn was a photographer with a long work history with Vogue Magazine, and was noted for his fashion photography, portraits and still lifes. Nicholas asked Diana Vreeland, his grandmother and Editor-in-Chief of Vogue, if she’d be able to arrange for him to meet Penn. Of course, she put this relationship together, and Vreeland was able to apprentice under Penn as his first job in the industry.
Speaking of the impact working with Penn had on him, Nicholas said: “The Penn studio instilled in me a monastic simplicity- his photographs have a monastic simplicity. There’s nothing gimmicky, there’s nothing added, there’s nothing superfluous, there’s a sort of search for a certain purity.”
Penn’s photography was simplistic in subject matter. Portraits of people, modernist stills of random objects, and travel shots - all the same types of things found in Vreeland’s photographs throughout the documentary.
Positioning subjects against sparse backgrounds was a trademark of Penn, largely in black and white, with heavy amounts of contrast that establish a crisp, organic look.
Vreeland’s own artistic style was certainly influenced by Penn, as many of those same adjectives and photographic techniques can be used to describe his work. Vreeland has a fascination with trees and geography, often photographing them as subject matter, and occasionally using them as supporting utility. He, like Penn, also finds power in capturing subjects against relatively austere backgrounds to maximize the subject’s intensity in the photo.
Vreeland told the Leica Camera Blog, “I think that my job in photographing is to photograph what’s before me and to present what I see to the viewer. I try not to impose my own opinion or my own values on the subject; I try to respect the subject. I feel that it’s my task to find the place where the subject speaks to me, whether it’s a person, a place, or a situation.”
That quote is a personalization of the way he described Penn’s work. It’s all about capturing the authenticity of what’s there.