the mighty penn; At 90, legendary artist and photographer Irving Penn is as inspired and prolific as ever.

Byline: Kennedy Fraser

"Many years ago, I started to work for Vogue," said Irving Penn, beginning the tale of the bedside lamp that is the subject of this radiant image. "I was coming to work at the old Vogue studio, and I passed a junk shop on Third Avenue. It was a very long time ago-1942, perhaps. The El was there. This lamp was on the sidewalk. I was very taken with it, and the guy wanted to be rid of it. It cost nothing-a few cents, not even dollars. I carried it home with me. It's brass and has a very old-fashioned look." His housekeeper is told never to polish it; and if it catches a little dust, that only makes the reflection more interesting. "It's the simplest kind of construction. When the bulb burns out, you get another. If I'm in bed, it's always next to me. It's a warm light, and somewhat warm in giving off heat. It's a wonderful thing."

I sat facing this extraordinary man, creator of such an endless stream of magical images, across the long white table in his tall white studio. He was wearing a black quilted cotton jacket that gave him an air of monastic sobriety and asceticism. In the bright and steady light he seemed physically slighter than the last time we met, some years back. But his complex character seemed more sharply focused than ever: the soft-voiced courtesy and humility; the serene detachment and wry humor not always masking faint anxiety; the palpable and disciplined self-mastery. And I was reminded that his pictures are so compelling, at least in part, because they seem like a protection for him-a defense against a powerful sensibility and sensuality that might otherwise overwhelm him.

No one is shrewder than Irving Penn about the gains and losses involved in being famous. He has never desired personal publicity-rarely speaking for the record and avoiding being photographed. With exceptions such as his famous platinum prints of fat nudes or cigarette butts, his work has fallen within the parameters of Vogue assignments or commissions from advertisers such as Clinique or Chanel. For several years in the 1950s, he rolled up his sleeves and photographed almost every new automobile launched by Plymouth. He is not afraid of commerce ("It's decent work," he says), but he will not permit himself to be commercialized. "Penn seldom squanders his intensity," said the late Alexander Liberman, who as the newly arrived art director of Vogue came into Penn's life around the time the lamp did. The men were a creative team for more than half a century. I was intrigued to see that Mr. Penn had arrived for our meeting prepared with a miniature layout, the way Liberman sketched ideas for a Penn still life or fashion pages. He consulted a scrap of paper he held in the palm of his hand. I could see a drawing of the picture-the disk, the ovoid bulb, the organic twiggy stem with its on-off switch. Next to it, like the footprints of small birds, were some koanlike jottings in his spiky writing.

In 1947, Penn was asked to make a group portrait of the twelve most photographed beauties of that era. It was a baptism of fire for the still relatively inexperienced photographer to impose his will on the models, many with their own wily prima donna ideas about how they should be presented. At that session, he met Lisa Fonssagrives, a Swedish-born beauty at the height of her glory. She was a few years older than he and worldlier, having lived for some time in artistic circles in Paris. (Like her first husband, she began as a dancer.) She and Penn fell in love, and they were married in 1950. Around that time they collaborated on some of the most memorable fashion pictures ever made: Lisa regal in New Look couture, against ...