Photographer Irving Penn was born on June 16, 1917, in New Jersey, USA. He passed away in 2009 at the age of 92.

In 1934, he enrolled in the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art and studied design under Alexey Brodovitch, known as the art director of fashion magazine Harper's Bazaar.

In 1943, his first color photograph of a living creature appeared on the cover of American Vogue, and over the next 60 years he produced a wide range of portrait and fashion works.

In 1983, he photographed Issey Miyake's clothing for Vogue, which marked the beginning of his relationship with designer Issey Miyake. For 13 years, from the Spring/Summer 1987 season to the Autumn/Winter 1999 season, he photographed the collection twice a year in New York. Miyake never attended any of the shoots, leaving everything to Penn, and the "visual dialogue" that mediated through their respective creations resulted in over 250 photographic works. In 2011, the 21_21 DESIGN SIGHT art museum in Roppongi, Tokyo, held an exhibition titled "Irving Penn and Issey Miyake: Visual Dialogue," which focused on the work of the two artists.