Gagosian presents its first exhibition dedicated to Irving Penn, surveying a career that quietly reshaped fashion photography, portraiture, and still life. Spanning works from the late 1940s to the early 2000s, the exhibition brings together iconic images originally published in Vogue alongside less frequently seen prints that reveal Penn’s lifelong commitment to the photograph as a crafted object.

Penn’s language is one of restraint. Neutral backdrops, precise lighting, and an acute sensitivity to gesture reduce fashion and portraiture to their essentials, whether in images of Marlene Dietrich or the sculptural silhouettes of postwar couture. Alongside these, flower studies and still lifes, printed using processes ranging from platinum-palladium to dye transfer, underscore his fascination with materiality, surface, and time. Even the unexpected, as in Bee on Lips (1995), carries Penn’s unmistakable clarity: beauty sharpened by tension.

The Gstaad presentation highlights Penn’s belief in photography as both an image and an object: an art of discipline, technique, wit, and lasting presence.

Where: Gagosian, Promenade 79, Gstaad When: 14 February – 6 April, 2026