The Pinault Collection presents the exhibition Irving Penn: Portraits of Artists in Dinard.
I have a very beautiful memory that I owe to Irving Penn. October 1974, Roger Thérond‘s office at PHOTO on the Champs Elysées :
“PHOTO will soon release its hundredth issue. It has to be sparkling. You’re going to New York and you’re going to see all the greats.”
My first trip to NY: The revelation.
Very quickly, on the spot, I was made to understand that it was Penn who was the key to success.
If he gives, everyone will follow, Avedon, Hiro and the great colorists…
Penn is the photographer who impressed me the most.
I never met him then.
I have absolutely no idea how to talk to him.
I invite him to lunch at the Café des Artistes: he accepts.
For an hour and a half, I talk to him about his little brother Arthur and Mickey One, his first film, a sort of dreamlike fable about Frank Sinatra with Warren Beatty and the sublime Alexandra Stewart with whom I was madly in love as a schoolboy.
At no time did I talk about Photography.
At the end of the meal, at the door of the restaurant, Penn said to me:
“Thank you for this lunch, it was surprising, don’t worry.
I’ll give you pictures for your anniversary issue.”
