Irving Penn on Issey Miyake

Product Information

Two-volume catalogue for the exhibition of both Penn and Miyake "Issey Miyake: Pleats Please", at the Touko Museum of Contemporary Art, 1 -30 Septembre 1990. It’s an outfit that speaks with great understatement about the relationship between fashion and photography, about the inventiveness and imagination shared between practitioners from adjacent visual fields, and about the need for critical distance and critical friends.

through the photographer’s lens, the texture, shapes and forms went beyond clothing and instead transformed into art.These photographs display the extraordinary collaboration between Irving Penn and the designer Issey Miyake.

Penn and Miyake, a Japanese fashion designer had a deep creative understanding of each other's work, having met in 1983. Following a session, Penn would then send the complete run of transparencies generated to Miyake in Tokyo, who would use them to review his design work and as the springboard for new design directions.Legendary designer Geoffrey Beene stated that he admired Issey Miyake for Miyake's technique, this in an interview with poet/artist Steven Vita in Veery journal, 1991.

Hardcover with dustjacket, unpaginated; dj is only good with moderate rubbing marks; internally very good condition; inscribed to Mary Lea Bandy (MOMA Film Dept) on image page after title page; dated 1988 and signed by Issey Miyake (in black marker; the marker bleeds onto the facing title page and the 2 pages after the signature page; no other internal marks. Penn would sit at a table with a pencil and paper and sketch as models wearing the designs were directed.

Photographs by Irving Penn; afterword by Tadao Ando (in English and Japanese, all other text in English. As part of the Met's Open Access policy, you can freely copy, modify and distribute this image, even for commercial purposes. During this time in the 80’s Miyake had been working with several ballets and theatre plays doing costume design. Y. 1988 [in a box]”; stamped and inscribed verso: “PHOTOGRAPH BY IRVING PENN / Copyright © 1988 by Irving Penn / Not to be reproduced without / written permission of / photographer. signed and stamped verso: “Irving Penn / IRVING PENN [in a circle]”; inscribed verso: “Print made 1988.