Penn's streamlined, meticulously lit images with carefully positioned models quickly gained him a reputation for elegance and wit, be they on the cover, in articles, or in glossy advertisements. Many were in black and white, including Black and White Vogue cover (Jean Patchett), New York (1950); Debut Couture Shoot for Vogue (1943); Vogue, December, 1995 (1995); and Vogue, September, 1991 (1991). Some were in soft delicate colour, like the covers for Vogue U.S. November 1949; Vogue, May 1946; and Vogue, October 1943. Others combined the two, as seen in the covers for Vogue U.S., September 1983 and Vogue, December 1943.
Read MoreHe used a daylight studio with an old theatre curtain for the background, which created a diffuse, soft ambience. After he began travelling, he usually used a Leica camera.
Penn also became successful with his celebrity portraits, devoting time and conversation to allow his subjects to relax so he could pick the precise moment. Notable portraits include Woman with Long Black Neck (Jean Patchett), New York (1951), Marcel Duchamp (1948), and Salvador Dali, New York (1947).
Later in the 1960s Penn travelled widely to make ethnographic studies of various 'exotic' communities. Resulting photographs include Cuzco Children (1960), Two New Guinea Men Holding Hands (1970), and Sitting Enga Woman (1970).
On other occasions, he documented tradespeople working in London, Paris, and New York, the images appearing in the pertinent city editions of Vogue. See, for example, Small trades (1951).
In the late 1970s his enlarged images of discarded objects became popular, as did his shots of wilted or dead flowers. These included detritus such as the cigarette butts in Cigarette No.85 (1972) and Cigarette No.8, New York (1972), or the flowers in Poppy, Barr's White, New York (1968).
In 1964 Penn developed a distinctive darkroom technique, drawn from the 19th century, for making platinum-palladium prints. This involved using a cotton rag paper with ultraviolet light for contact printing and applying the platinum emulation with a brush. It creates usually soft, warm tones.
