Remarks on working for Irving Penn

-delivered at the Wichita Museum of Art, in a presentation associated with their exhibition of the show “Irving Penn: Beyond Beauty” organized by the Smithsonian Museum

"It is the responsibility of artists to pay attention to the world, pleasant or otherwise, and to help us live respectfully in it.

Artists do this by keeping their curiosity and moral sense alive, and by sharing with us their gift for metaphor. Often this means finding similarities between observable fact and inner experience -between birds in a vacate lot, say, and an intuition worthy of Genesis.

More than anything else, beauty is what distinguishes art. Beauty is never less than a mystery, but it has within it a promise.

In this way, art encourages us to gratitude and engagement, and is of both personal and civic consequence."

Robert Adams, from the introduction to "Art Can Help"

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20 years ago, in the late fall of 1997, when I first met him, Irving Penn was 80 years old. By that time he had been recognized for decades as one of the greatest photographers, and held a keystone position in the history of the medium. He was a great artist, and had played a key role in winning the debate as to whether photography was, after all, a legitimate form of high art. He was still at the height of his creative output.

Rather than rest on his laurels and repeat formulas for success, he continued to push the medium, respond to changes in his environment, and our culture, energetically. He knew who Kurt Cobain, Nan Goldin and William Burroughs were, understood the urgency in hip hop culture, and echoed many of the same cultural signals, from Irrational Exuberance to the Blue Gap Dress, in his own particularly elegant but intense way. Alongside this work, he also preserved and pursued his drive for a more gentle, lyrical imagery. He kept a lucrative roster of commercial clients satisfied while doing this, and still had the resources to work with museums on major retrospectives, exquisite book publications, private gallery shows and to explore new technologies. He did all of this as he kept an eye on the ticking clock, overseeing the organization and preservation of his massive archive. He walked from his apartment to the studio every day, was in no later than nine in the morning and often stayed past six in the evening. On weekends he made the trip to his studio in Huntington to work on elaborate large-scale platinum prints and make paintings. Editions of his work would sell out before exhibitions opened.

I was looking for a job. I had recently moved to Brooklyn from Paris, where I had enjoyed a modest career as a professional photographer, had a few decent publications of my work under my belt, and had had a handful of solo exhibitions in respectable commercial galleries and institutions. But my life in Paris had gotten stale. My photography was stagnating. I decided moving to New York City might give me a chance to grow more.

My Parisian resume proved to be effectively worthless in New York City. Within a few weeks of my arrival, it was obvious I was going to have to start over, at the bottom, at the age of 37. I wasn't suited to be a photographer's assistant. But I was running out of money, facing the prospect of real poverty, and I had to learn an entirely new skillset, fast.

A dear friend of mine from college named Eric Jeffreys had printed for Penn. I had already asked him maybe a million questions about what it was like to work at the Penn studio. He had told me it was fantastic, and, oh, by the way, he's referred to as Mr. Penn. The rumor that the studio was nicknamed "the hospital" because it was so quiet was true. I asked him another question: do you think I might be able to get some work at the studio? He kindly gave me the contact information of Mr. Penn's first assistant, Billy Jim, and encouraged me to get in touch with him.

If I've got to start over at the bottom, I thought, I might as well try to start at the top of the bottom.

In late summer of that year, Billy invited me to come by the studio for a visit, to get acquainted, even though there were no openings at that time. So, one late afternoon, after the day's business was finished at the studio, I rode the very slow elevator up to the eleventh floor of 89 Fifth Avenue.

To say the place was understated would be an understatement. The main entry was a small white metal door with a peephole, and the words "Conde Nast" in small black type affixed just below the peephole. Billy let me in to the efficient space of about three thousand square feet. There was a tidy business office with room for two desks on the left, a cubbyhole kitchenette to the right, a larger room ahead with a long table, a moveable partition, a mirrored wall on the far side, all lit by tall west-facing windows, and then a fair sized shooting area without windows off to the right of the kitchenette. To the back of this space was the assistant's work area, with a freight elevator on the opposite side. Opposite the freight elevator was a darkroom. The bathroom was out the back door, down the hall on the right. The furnishings were all clean and functional, but didn't match, and looked as though they may have been acquired at auction. Everything about the studio was utilitarian, devoid of glitz.

As he showed me around, Billy stressed the workaday approach of Mr. Penn's practice. He showed me some examples of the equipment they used. It was all classic, perfectly maintained, oftentimes modified to Mr. Penn's preferences in specific DIY mechanic ways, and bearing the patina of decades careful use: Deardorff 8" X 10" view cameras with several Fuji lenses, Rollei and Hasselblad medium format cameras, an old Tiltall tripod, enormous 35 year-old Speedotron packs with tubes in their heads so old they weren't coated with UV filters. Among this arsenal a few specialty items stood out; a giant banquet camera and a custom made 8" X 10" view camera fabricated by Richard Reed used for photographing street debris. Everything exuded total clarity of intention.

When we sat down to talk, I was extremely nervous. Billy put me at ease, in the first moments of what has turned out to be a friendship that endures twenty years later. He seemed to take my whacky resume and peripatetic life in stride. He looked sympathetically at my portfolio, which, in retrospect, was incredibly peculiar, and had very little to do, aside some basic technical skills, with the work being done at the studio. He exuded calm, was efficient, extremely polite, soft spoken and clear. After about a half hour we shook hands and parted. I knew better than to call them.

A couple of months later they called me. They needed someone to spot prints.

This is the most lowly, arduous, mindless, unspectacular work in all of photography.

I needed work.

This was a call from the Penn Studio.

I accepted immediately.

The job started with a test.

I was to arrive at the studio around 9:30, once the morning's first business was out of the way. When I got there, Mr. Penn was nowhere in sight. After a brief introduction I sat down with the studio archivist, Regina Montfort, with some scraps of test prints to see if I was capable of taking a minuscule brush, with tiny amounts of gray ink and delicately stipple the ink over glaring white dust specks, scratches, smears and stains and make them invisible. Regina gave me gloves and jeweler's goggles and she watched me like a hawk. She had selected some nasty examples of damage. I knew Mr. Penn was somewhere in the next room. I worked with all my concentration for about 90 minutes. This was kind of a weird experience. As soon as I felt I couldn't do any more, I said, that's the best I can do. Regina took the jeweler's googles from me, looked over the scraps without saying a word, and then said, "Alright, I'm going to show these to Mr. Penn."

A few minutes later, she came back and said, "Mr. Penn would like to speak with you." Then she went off to do something else and left me alone at the spotting station.

Soon enough, after what felt like an eternity, I met Irving Penn for the first time in my life. I was extremely intimidated.

He did not, at the age of 80, exude any frailty at all. He seemed spry, rather strong, even though he was a little stocky. He sat in a cloth studio chair with purposeful poise. He went over the test scraps with me and said, "I don't see anything. That's good."

"The scratches are the most challenging for me to get rid of," I said.

"I don't see them at all," he replied.

He had a very soft, deep baritone unhurried voice. I found myself leaning toward him to listen to what he was saying. "We focus on our work here. There's not a lot of chit chat, even though it is a friendly place, I think." Then he paused. It seemed like he was considering something. Finally he said, nodding, "Yes, it is a friendly place."

To this day, I remember very clearly how he said, "Yes, it is a friendly place."

At that particular moment, it felt as though this might be the one and only time in my life I would ever personally interact with Irving Penn. I wanted to be able to remember every last detail of that moment. I wanted to see what I could understand about him.

He looked right at me and asked, "How do you see your role here?"

I had to think about that. Even though it was a simple question, Mr. Penn had been choosing his words so carefully, and seemed so attentive that I felt I was being carefully scrutinized. All I could say as an answer was, "You need someone to do this work, and I would like to do it."

Then he asked me about my availability.

A few days later, at around nine in the morning, I came in to be greeted by Regina, and a pile of Penn prints. Regina gave me some helpful pointers about how to arrange the workstation and then explained that Mr. Penn wanted to go over the prints with me before I started, and see every edition when it was finished.

Suddenly, spotting prints seemed like it might not be so boring after all.

Mr. Penn went over every edition with me carefully, explaining what he wanted to be corrected by spotting, and what he wanted to have left alone. He stressed that he wanted to get rid of distractions, but to maintain evidence of the rough vitality in the materials and the process. He cited specific examples, "Take this dust out. Don't worry about these scratches. This water stain is a problem. I don't think we need to worry about this streak. I don't want them to look 'slick'."

I had previously seen a number of Penn prints hanging in museums and galleries, but I had never held one in my hands. Framed, behind glass, they are exceptionally intense artworks. Holding them in my hands, scrutinizing them with magnifying glasses in the light of a 250 watt bulb, was something else. The best of them would cause me to pause in amazement... even the less successful ones were transparent, hypnotic and penetrating. Seeing how he experimented with different interpretations throughout editions was illuminating. Oftentimes, two radically different versions of a print would be equally as exciting. He pushed the medium hard, to it's breaking point, and found dazzling possibilities at its limits.

As I finished each batch, I would usually present the prints to Mr. Penn. He would attentively pour over them. It was the first time he had seen his work complete. He was very concentrated, but generally didn't dally. He would inspect each one. Occasionally he would sit up and linger for a bit longer over one particular print. Mostly he just looked them over carefully, but efficiently. The first time he did this, I was pretty nervous. What if I had messed something up? It quickly became clear that he just wanted to see them finished, and my work was adequate. He would turn over the last print in the edition, say, "These look good. Put your initials on the back and go on to the next."

True to Mr. Penn's words at our first meeting, there wasn't a lot of chit chat in the studio. As a matter of fact, there was none. Most of the time, the place was as quiet as a library, or a monastery -or a hospital. I like this kind of environment. But after a while, it started to feel rather... extreme. Days would pass in the studio without more than a few words being spoken. My work pretty quickly slipped into a routine. For a few days each week, one edition after another, I would silently sit for hours, with my tiny brushes, my glove, my magnifying spectacles, a stack of prints and a billion little white specks to arduously turn gray. It was like threading an infinity of needles. It got pretty weird sometimes. It suited me.

It wasn't all silence and gray ink. About once per day something would come up that broke the routine.

Once I returned from lunch to find the floor of the front room covered with butcher's paper, and Mr. Penn crawling around looking at an array of the entire Christmas at Cuzco suite of images, laid across the paper. It stopped me in my tracks. I had to look, carefully. He seemed to appreciate my amazement. I asked him how it felt to shoot that work. "It was euphoric." he replied without a millisecond's hesitation.

Another day, while working on a platinum print from a banquet camera negative, I discovered, much to my dismay, an enormous thumbprint in the shadows off to the left of the image, lurking in the shadows. Retouching such an enormous flaw out would take tedious hours. I brought it to Mr. Penn's attention. He looked at it. He looked at me. He looked again at it. He looked again at me and said, "Leave it. It's mine."

Sometimes when he was going over finished editions with me, they would provoke reminiscences, or little comments. I learned that Mr. Penn found Man Ray to be a very melancholy person, and very difficult to photograph. Kate Moss had a very high, squeaky voice. T. S. Eliot was very prompt, and dapper. David Bowie was exceptionally erudite and easy to work with. New York City in the late 1930's was a surrealist's paradise.

Mr. Penn understood that I was also my own photographer. Every now and then I would get a job of my own. Once I was hired for a job in Buffalo, New York. When I explained I was going to need to take the next couple of day's off, he charmingly, perfectly recited the entire chorus of the song "Shuffle off to Buffalo" from the musical "42nd Street" for me from memory, with a prankster's grin on his face.

One morning when I came in to find that Vasilios Zatse, Mr. Penn's second assistant, had put a new batch of prints on my workstation. I took off my jacket then found Mr. Penn at his desk with a moment to go over the prints. As we were turning through them, an extraordinary portrait of Al Pacino came up. We've all seen Pacino as a confident, rather swaggering personae. This picture revealed an actor's vulnerability, the complexities of a person behind the mask of a role. It stopped me cold. I couldn't help but try to figure it out.

Before I knew what I was saying, I blurted out, "Mr. Penn, how do you direct people when you're making your portraits to get... this?!?!"

As soon as I asked this question I regretted it. We weren't at the studio as students. This wasn't an apprenticeship. There was too much work to get done for chit chat -or questions like this one. I knew this. The question had just popped out of me, brought on by the picture.

Mr. Penn seemed to be a little taken aback by what I had let out. He stopped for a couple of heartbeats, and then he put his hand on his forehead and closed his eyes for maybe two seconds. Then he said, "I don't know!"

The way he said it, I realized he wasn't being dismissive. He really didn't know. After a lifetime of having done it successfully, he still did not quite know how it worked.

Then, he took his hand away from his forehead, looked down at the photograph and started to speak, slowly, as if he was struggling to recall something crucial. "People come into the studio, and we welcome them. Then I sit down to converse with them for a few moments, to get acquainted. We might have a cup of coffee or tea. And then I invite them onto the set, when I feel we have something of a rapport."

He paused for a moment and went on. "Then I'll have them sit down where the light is right."

He paused again. "Then, I will stare at them." Another pause. "Until they're uncomfortable."

This really surprised me. Penn's legend always talked about how adept he was at putting his portrait subjects at ease. Here he was, sitting right in front of me, telling me straight up, that he stared at them until they were uncomfortable.

At that moment I realized I had better remember every word of what he was saying. For me, his words were a kind of magic elixir that is the whole point of any pilgrimage. If there was anything I needed to get out of my quirky path in my life as a photographer, which led me to be sitting right there, right then, this was it. Not only should I remember it, I should try to understand it.

I believe that there wasn't a nanogram of cruelty in Mr. Penn's nature. He wasn't staring at his subjects "until they're uncomfortable" because he was controlling or cruel. He realized that the truth of the matter is uncomfortable, impossible to control. No reasonable person wants the whole of their character to be revealed, with all of our contradictions, paradoxes, vulnerabilities and complexities given equal measure to our triumphs. People in front of a camera want to look good, however they might think "looking good" might look. I'm convinced that what Mr. Penn was telling me, was that by staring at them until "they're uncomfortable," he was announcing to them that he had to see everything, if the picture were to succeed.

He went on. "And then I might ask them to look out the window, or turn to the left. But I would never ask them to act one way or another. That never works."

He stopped and looked up, and, to me, he seemed relieved. We went on to the next group of prints in the pile. After that I spent the day working the brushes and gray ink and thinking this 60 second moment of my life over.

That evening when I got home from work, I opened a beer, sat down and jotted down notes about what he had said.

Little events like these kept me from going bonkers with my brushes.

Still, I found myself wishing for more variety in the work. When I overheard that Mr. Penn was having a difficult time finding a printer to replace Eric, who was working on another job, I offered my skills. He seemed troubled. I realized that, in fact, it was hard for him to find a skilled spotter, and he wanted to keep me right where I was. At first I was disappointed and felt I was being pigeonholed. But, after a while, I realized that Mr. Penn really respected the work I was doing. He always took the time necessary to stay involved with the process. Most photographers don't give spotting much thought. Mr. Penn gave it considerable thought.

Over time, around this interaction, we became acquainted with each other, and, while I wouldn't say we ever engaged in chit chat, we would at times converse at greater length.

Penn was a man of many paradoxes. He was quite famous but intensely private. He was very humane and generous, but very much what you might describe as an aristocrat or an elitist. He may not have said much, but when he said something, it carried a lot of meaning.

I think his bearing in the world and the potency of his photographs coincide. He seldom made public remarks about his work, very rarely agreed to be interviewed. But when he did say something for the record, it was significant. During a panel discussion at Wellesley College in the 1970's, he stated, "As a photographer, the realism of the real world is almost unbearable to me. There's too much accidental painfulness in it."

It occurred to me, as I was working with him, that his guarded nature was a defense against having the urgency of the world around us stop him in his tracks. His studio was an oasis of calm focus on the task of creating meaningful work amid the raucous, ruthless turmoil that drives New York City forward.

The necessities of respecting Mr. Penn's privacy became especially clear to me one day when I was heading out to lunch. He kept a small framed print of his photograph "The Twelve Most Photographed Models," which he had made the day he met his wife Lisa, on his desk. As I was leaving I stuck my head in the office to let he and Dee know I would be back shortly. I saw Mr. Penn sitting upright at his desk with his right hand holding his left ring finger, were he still wore his marriage band, and staring directly at that picture. He seemed to be a million miles away. I didn't say anything and quietly went out the door.

I worked at the studio a few days per week, about three weeks per month, on average, for about four years. Toward the end of my first year Mr. Penn seemed to have grown accustomed to me. But he was still pretty guarded. My acquaintance and friendship with the other studio personnel gradually grew as well. Everyone associated with the place was really kind and smart. The cool stability of the place was good for me. My life outside of it was not so calm. My work at the Penn Studio kept me grounded, and kept the wolf from the door.

One day, toward the middle of my second year of work, Mr. Penn's office manager, Dee Vitale asked me if I might be able to translate a piece of writing about a Penn photograph from French into English. I happily agreed. It turned out to be written by Brion Gysin, whom I had been friends with when I lived in Paris. I told Dee how amazed I was by it, and she told Mr. Penn. He asked me how I had met Brion. I told him William Burroughs had introduced us. He asked me how I knew Burroughs. I explained Burroughs had moved to the town of Lawrence, Kansas when I was in college, and friends had introduced us. Mr. Penn asked me if I might know who had the rights to Brion's work, so he could get permission to reproduce the text in the Penn book "A Notebook at Random." It turned out I knew the exact answer to that question, and offered to call James Grauerholz up on my cellphone right then. He and Dee were delighted, and, as luck would have it, James picked up the phone right away. I put Dee on the phone, and within five minutes, Mr. Penn had the permission he had been worrying about being able to get.

This moment broke the ice.

A little while after Dee got off the phone. Mr. Penn came to my spotting station and shared a reminiscence. He and his beloved wife had met Brion Gysin when they were in Tangiers working on his "Worlds in a Small Room" project. His guide, Ted Morgan, whom I was also acquainted with, had taken them to dinner at Brion's legendary restaurant. Gysin had fed them royally, and both Mr. Penn and Lisa had fallen for his erudite charm. "Gysin may have been the best story teller I have ever met," he said.

"After dinner, he locked the doors to the restaurant, regaled us with stories for what must have been two hours, and," -his voice dipped into a grave conspiratorial rumble, "We smoked marijuana."

Oh what I wouldn't give to have been a fly on the wall the night Irving Penn and Lisa Fonssagrives Penn smoked marijuana with Brion Gysin in Morocco!

Mr. Penn wouldn't tell me whether or not he got off.

Aside from my own more comfortable rapport with Mr. Penn, after the first year of my time at the studio, the general atmosphere became a little more relaxed. The time of my first arrival was a period of other changes for Mr. Penn. Regina had moved on to pursue her own work. His darkroom had to be moved from the back of the studio to a room downstairs. His contracts with both Vogue and Clinique were being renegotiated. All of these changes had the effect of keeping Penn's guard up. Once they were settled, he relaxed, and so did everyone around him.

Dee signaled her increased comfort by announcing to Mr. Penn that she would be bringing her neighbor's dachshund into the studio while she was dog sitting for them. Mr. Penn did not want a dog in the studio. "I don't want a dog in here," he said.

Dee brought the dog in anyway.

The next Monday morning, Dee, the studio personnel and the dachshund arrived at eight thirty. Mr. Penn arrived at nine.

The dog immediately went to work on him. The dog Knew Who He Had to Charm. And he did. He kept his distance, wagged his tail slowly and looked up at Mr. Penn with irresistible doe eyes. In a matter of fifteen minutes, the dog was settled at Mr. Penn's feet beneath his desk, behaving with perfect decorum. By lunch time Mr. Penn was secretly feeding the dog treats. The next day Mr. Penn let the dog follow him around, and made a show of trying to act aloof to the dog's affection for him. It was clear to us that we shouldn't mention it. By the middle of the week, when Mr. Penn arrived at the studio each morning, the dachshund was the first person Mr. Penn greeted, with lavish affection and smiles, but only if no one was looking. When we noticed the dog, Mr. Penn would remind us, "Don't let this dog distract you from your work." And then at lunch time he would give the dog a piece of his cookie.

The following Monday, dog sitting was over. The dog had gone home to it's family. Mr. Penn arrived at the studio at nine and the first words out of his mouth were, "Where's the dog?" It was clear for the rest of the day Mr. Penn was missing having this funny little dachshund around.

A few days after this was Mr. Penn's 82nd birthday. He received many invitations to go out for special meals with fancy people, like Anna Wintour, Peter MacGill, Peter Schub. Mr. Penn wasn't in the mood for that. Dee encouraged him to do something special. "If you don't want to go out to lunch, what would you enjoy?"

Mr. Penn just wanted to have a group lunch with all of his studio personnel.

Throughout the morning of his birthday, gifts arrived by delivery. Among the cards, flowers, cakes and boxes of chocolates, was a stuffed dachshund with an enormous bouquet of helium balloons attached to it. I was nearby the door when it came in. Mr. Penn looked at me and asked, "Where are we going to put this?!?!" -The bouquet of balloons nearly filled the room.

I suggested that he could tie a card to the balloons and release them into the wind. He smiled. I went back to my work station. A few minutes later I heard the window open, and I got up to see Mr. Penn leaning way out the window, eleven floors up from Fifth Avenue, to let the balloons go and watch them float up, up, up, with a five-year-old's smile on his face. He saw me, standing there ready to catch him if he slipped, and he came back in, carefully closed the window, dusted off his hands officiously, and shot me a smile.

Mr. Penn kept the stuffed dachshund.

At lunch we shared food and what might be called chit-chat. Toward the end of the simple meal, with plenty of cake, he looked around at us all, Billy, Vasilios, Dee, Felicia and me, and quietly said, "You know, I can't imagine a better group of people to work with."

Then we went back to work.

Toward the end of my third year working there, I started to get more and more of my own work outside the studio. I had done so much spotting by that time that I had gotten pretty quick about it. We had finished a big backlog of editions, and it was pretty easy to keep up with the new ones. My time working at the studio diminished. By 2001, there were times when weeks would go by without my being able to come in, and then when I did come in, I could wrap everything up within a day or two.

Finally, my work outside became full time. One day in the late summer of 2001 Vasilios, who had moved up to being Mr. Penn's first assistant after Billy had moved on, gave me a call to ask me if I would be able to come in and do some printing for Mr. Penn. I really wanted to. But I had other commitments. After thinking about it over night, trying to figure out a way to move my responsibilities around so I could take on this new work, I reluctantly called Vasilios back to decline. He understood and wished me luck.

After that I never worked at the studio again.

The World Trade Center came down a few weeks later. In the days afterward, I felt the need to reach out to the people I was closest to in New York City, and so I called the studio to check in. Vasilios told me they had watched the collapse from the window that gave Mr. Penn's portraits their distinctive light. I asked him how everyone was holding up. He told me Mr. Penn was pretty dispirited, but that they were coming in to work every day, focused on their tasks. I asked if I could come by for a visit. He checked with Dee and Mr. Penn and said, sure.

It was the only time I ever saw Mr. Penn looking outright gloomy. We exchanged some dry banalities and then I asked what he thought. "Well, I'm worried about the reaction, and the fact that we don't have many friends in that part of the world."

In an effort to inject some optimism into our exchange I said, well, humanity rebuilt after two world wars, surely this won't be so bad, and we'll bumble through. He sat for a second, looked at me and gently said, "Well, the trouble is we don't know what the dead have to say about it."

I asked him what he thought might be done. He looked me in the eye and said, "We can only do our work and hope that people see it."

When I left the studio that day I felt, more than I ever had up to that point in my life, the importance of the hard won successes in Art, and more determination than ever to keep that flame lit.

I continued to go by every few months to visit, was always warmly welcomed and I sure enjoyed seeing everyone. When Mr. Penn found himself with a grandson, he embraced the role of being a grandfather with gusto and joy. I never saw him together with his grandson, but I did notice the highly unusual presence of goofy family snapshots pinned to the office bulletin board, a twinkle in Penn's eye when he spoke of his grandson and heard that the boy was even allowed to spend days at the studio, and adored his grandpa. It turned out that Penn's affection for the dachshund was a dress rehearsal for the arrival of his grandson.

Aside from that, Mr. Penn was constantly up to something, but he was getting noticeably older, and the studio activity focused more and more on organizing archival material and less and less on new projects. Our conversations centered on exchanges of news, and the amazing speed with which the technology and business of photography were changing. On the second to last of these visits Mr. Penn said to me, "The medium is now more full of possibilities than it's ever been. But there will never be the kind of opportunity I've been so fortunate to have. That's finished. Still, I wish I could start all over."

A few months after that, I realized just what he meant. I looked out at the panorama of what photography in New York CIty had become over the past decade, when I had enjoyed some wonderful experiences, worked harder than ever before in my life, learned more about photography than I knew was possible, and realized that I too needed to start all over. I decided to pack everything up, move to Kansas where I began some 25 years before, and enter into what has now become, by far, the most prolific part of my life as a photographer.

A few weeks before I left, I went by the studio for what turned out to be my last visit. Mr. Penn was definitely showing his age by this time. But he was excited to have completed another body of work called "Underfoot." These are some of his most rarified, esoteric, wild and raw images. Vasilios had made the prints for him.

Mr. Penn had done the spotting himself.

I returned to Kansas in October of 2008. In January of 2009 I spoke with Dee. She told me that Mr. Penn had not been coming in to the studio. He was 91.

On the late afternoon of Wednesday, October 7th, 2009, I was out in a scrappy little piece of what developers call "unimproved land" in northeast Kansas, about to expose a sheet of 4" X 5" film, when my phone rang. I almost never pay attention to my phone when I'm photographing. This time, I did. It was a fellow photographer, telling me that Irving Penn had passed away earlier that day.

It wasn't a surprise, -as we say about such moments. But it was The Moment I found Out a friend had passed away, and, our cultural landscape had shifted. I took a little longer and looked at little harder at the image on the ground glass after I got off the phone. The picture was my own, and would never be mistaken for a Penn picture. Still, the intensity of his commitment, passion and restless questioning are a part of it, as they are a part of every photograph I make.

Since then I get news about or hear from friends I worked with at the studio. They all still hold a special place among the people I've been fortunate to meet in my life. They're moving on, and, as far as I can tell, doing well.

It's safe to say, for all of us, our memories of our time in the Penn studio remain a vital part of our lives.