Reflection on Irving Penn’s photographs: After-Dinner Games, New York, 1947
Jeff L. Rosenheim: In this wonderful still life, every element visually touches every other element. Even the corner of the numbered die kisses the chess figure; it rests against the playing card; the card touches the coffee cup and saucer; etc. The picture offers us a charming lesson on how to read all of Penn’s photographs. Much of the work is about touch, weight, and equipoise. Penn uses these elements to subtly move our eyes around his compositions. The way this works here is fascinating. The number 64 die meets the die with the pips that count six and four. Six and four added together makes ten, which Penn incorporates on the domino piece using the double five. And so on with both colour and shape. Of course, most viewers may not look at the photograph in this way, but similar visual resonances are in play in the other still lifes, the fashion studies, the portraits, even in the nudes. How Penn constructs his photographs — the elegant puzzle of each composition — contributes to their meaning and quiet drama. You can really see Penn establishing his core visual methodology in After-Dinner Games. It is something that he will use throughout his entire career. Perhaps this is why he seems to have been most passionate and devoted to the idea of the still life: it is hiding everywhere in his work.