Irving Penn Research.

Irving Penn... 

Was born in 1917 and sadly passed in 2009. He was most famous for this fashion photography and his portraits. Examples of his work are shown above. Penn's work is a really good example of low key lighting, and high key lighting. As you can see, his work was to capture the clear facial features of the women- for his work at vogue. Alongside showing the masculine features but making it much darker. as you can see from the top middle image, most of the image isn't seen, yet the facial features (the most important part on a portrait) are highlighted.

Penn was one of the first photographers to present their subjects on a grey background. As his career expanded, he continued to expand his studio set up, constructing different sets of backdrops and angles. 

As shown from his work above, you can also tell how depending of the gender, he experimented with the lighting as well. It is most likely that his photos of women- especially the ones above, were for fashion magazines/ vogue.

It is no doubt that Penn paid attention to the small details when capturing his photos- that would have been helped by the use of studio lighting.