The Irving Penn photography exhibit at the National Gallery is candy for your aesthetic bone. The exhibit takes place in about four rooms filled with black and white portraits all taken in front of a simple curtain backdrop with few props. Penn uses the spareness of his set to illuminate his subjects, artistic icons like Picasso and Tennessee Williams, Hell Angels from San Francisco in the sixties, and New Guinea warriors in full war paint. The intensity of the images are disarming but seem playful and proud, pulling you in invitingly. His other photographs include cigeratte butts and other trash he assembles in makeshift sculpture. It is all beautiful. You leave in love, even with the trash.
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