Irving Penn: Preserving the Myth of the American Woman

Abstract

Marlene Dietrich blew into Irving Penn's Fifth Avenue studio to have her portrait taken for a 1948 issue of Vogue. "The first thing she said was 'you have to put the light there!' I said, 'Now, look: in this experience you be Dietrich and I'll be the photographer.' And, boy, she was boiled, but she stayed with it"(Fielden). To Penn's bewilderment, Dietrich ultimately was unhappy with the portrait and the next time she saw him she, "turned on her heel" and walked the other way (Fielden). Dietrich was a new brand of American celebrity. She had made a name for herself by bending the rules of gender representation, often wearing men's clothing in sexually provocative settings (Chauncey). To "be Dietrich" is for Marlene to control her self-presentation and expression. To forgo her agency is for her to hand her identity to its capturer. In his portrait of Marlene Dietrich, Irving Penn controls Dietrich's presentation thereby manipulating her identity and imposing an unwarranted sense of shame onto her body forcing her to conform to the myth of the midcentury American woman.