Irving Penn dies

Irving Penn, one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century, has died at his Manhattan home, aged 92.

Penn started out as a fashion photographer, working for US Vogue in the early '40s, where he quickly made his name, thanks to his distinctive style of shooting his subjects in against plain studio backdrops. He went on to broaden his subject matter, shooting everything and everyone from 'ordinary' workers to cigarette butts, but his technique remained constant.

"Many photographers feel their client is the subject," he explained in a 1991 interview in the New York Times. "My client is a woman in Kansas who reads Vogue. I'm trying to intrigue, stimulate, feed her... The severe portrait that is not the greatest joy in the world to the subject, may be enormously interesting to the reader."

Penn married model Lisa Fonssagrives in 1950 and they remained together until her death in 1992. They had a son, Tom, together, and she also had a daughter, Mia, from a previous marriage.

Many of the fashion world's biggest names took time out from Paris Fashion Week today to pay their tributes.

"In my career, I have met no one else who worked with the level of imaginative intensity and economy of Irving Penn," Anna Wintour told WWD. "His photographs were as exquisite and electrifying in the last year of his life as they were in 1943, when he started contributing to Vogue. To have been a colleague and friend of one of the greatest artists of the 20th century is a privilege greater than I could have ever imagined."

Picture: A portrait of Kate Moss, shot by Irving Penn 1996, which sold for $91,000 last year.

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