Irving Penn: Centennial, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, April 20–July 30, 2017. Traveled to: Grand Palais, Paris, September 21, 2017–January 29, 2018; C/O Berlin, March 24–July 1, 2018.

I was living in the town of Fuchu, adjacent to Hiroshima. My house, where my mother was, was 2.3 kilometers away from the epicenter of the bomb blast.

Penn photographed for Vogue and commercial clients in America and abroad for nearly 70 years. Whether an innovative fashion image, striking portrait, or compelling still life, each of Penn’s pictures bears his trademark style of elegant aesthetic simplicity. In 1950–51, inspired by old prints of street criers, Penn began a series of photographs depicting representatives of the Small Trades in Paris, London, and New York. The project began in Paris, where he was assisted in the selection of subjects by French Vogue editor Edmonde Charles-Roux and photographer Robert Doisneau. Penn's reflections on the tradespeople: At 78, Miyake is more relevant than ever, influencing a new generation of designers such as Proenza Schouler, Jonathan Anderson, and Naoki Takizawa. At the exhibition opening in Tokyo, Miyake was presented with France’s premier award, the rank of the Commander of the Legion of Honor—a fitting tribute to a revolutionary designer who continues to look to the challenges of making the world a more beautiful and sustainable place. Here, we’ve created our own tribute of sorts—a lexicon and guide to the designer’s groundbreaking work, collaborators, and innovative thinking—providing an opportunity to experience his joy of creation and hinting at greater possibilities in the future. Untroubled: Irving Penn, Works from the Pinault Collection, Mina Image Centre, Beirut, Lebanon, January 17–April 28, 2019.

Miyake’s career has been marked by a number of partnerships with creative legends in their own right— like Irving Penn, Ikko Tanaka, Shiro Kuramata, and Ron Arad—and more recently with design brands Artemide and Iittala. “Designing clothes isn’t solitary work, it requires associations with many people,” Miyake was quoted as saying in the book Irving Penn Regards the Work of Issey Miyake (Bulfinch Press, 1999). “I want people to know everything is the result of teamwork—like making a movie.” Callaway, Nicholas and Irving Penn. Issey Miyake: Photographs by Irving Penn. New York: Little, Brown & Company, 1988. Mr. Miyake’s “Flying Saucer” dress, on display in 2020 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan. Dolly Faibyshev for The New York TimesThe recent vogue for electric lamps in the style of the old standing lanterns comes, I think, from a new awareness of the softness and warmth of paper, qualities that, for a time, we had forgotten,” novelist Junichiro Tanizaki noted in his seminal 1933 essay, “In Praise of Shadows.” Tanizaki famously compared the traditional Japanese attitude toward light and shade with modern Westernized ideas in the essay—the differences he noted remain to this day.