Transcripts For KQED Charlie Rose 20170530

Different. Because you see us in the first way, its impossible to see us in the second way. Rose the urban pen exhi pigs at the metropolitan museum of art. We talk to jeff rosenheim. He understood the page of the magazine and how a picture would sit in, inc. H in the magazine and demanded it stop traffic and by doing so he applied all the training and art to the challenge. I mean, she was basically a vogue photographer for over 60 years. Most of his pictures in the show were seen there and, yet, he was able to make prints on his own that have other qualities. Thats the art. Rose theater and photography. When we continue. And by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Rose dear evan hansen is running at the music box theater here in new york, following a High School Student with severe anxiety getting caught up in a social media fueled movement after a fellow classmate commits suicide. The New York Times writes ben platt is giving a performance not likely to be bettered on broadway this season. Dear evan hansen is nominated for nine tonys including best musical. Hears a look. When youre in a forest and theres no one around do you ever make a crash or a sound when youre falling in a forest and theres no one around do you ever crash or make a sound will i ever make a sound on the outside always looking in will i ever be more i try to speak nobody can hear so i wait for an answer to appear waiting through a window can anybody see is anybody waiting is anybody waving back at me waving waving whoa oh. cheers and applause rose joining me is star ben platt nominated for best actor in a musical and writer Stephen Levinson nominated for best book of a musical, pleased to have them both at this table for the first time. Welcome. Great to have you here. Thanks for vugs. Rose who is evan hansen . A really lonely kid. Teenager in high school. He is incredibly isolated, has trouble connecting to other people and that is heightened by the hyperconnectivity of social media and the fact with young people, everything theyre doing online is instantaneously judged and looked at, so he feels under deep scrutiny which makes him retreat anymore and he cant find a place to belong and be heard and feel connected to anyone or anything. And through this sort of rather terrible lie that he tells about a fake friendship with a kid in his class who has committed suicide, even grows very close to the grieving family of the kid and helps them to heal in a wayened finds a new voice and confidence and a place to be important and belong and finds a new confidence and starts to come out of his shell although its all predicated on this fabrication. Rose is it also a critique of social media . When we started working on this, ben, justin and i and my fellow writers and composers of the music, we initially talked about it as more of a frontal critique on social media, more of a parody or satire and, as the show evolved, i think what we really bam interested in was exploring, yes, how social media was promote this kind of false idea of who we are and were all kind of performing on there. Rose and do we belong. Yes, exactly, but, at the same time, there is Something Real that happens on there. There is a sense of belonging that people find, a sense of connection, and, so, it really is this doubleedged sword. Rose when you thought about this, when you guys wrote this, was it based on a newspaper headline youd seen or a story youd seen . These things actually happen. Absolutely. It was based originally on one of the composers in high school had a classmate who died of an accidental Drug Overdose and he was someone who was a real loner, an outsider, no friends, and in the wake of his death, binge watched as his fellow students watched to say i was friends with him, our lockers were close to each other. Everyone wanted a part of the tragedy. Benj stored it as way as troubling. Benj went to college, met justin paul and they both discussed the story. We all knew people who had written college is says about their place in 9 11. Social media, that kind of insertion into tragedy seems only to escalate and get crazier until any kind of catastrophe in the world became a way for people to talk about themselves. Then when the three of us began working together, that was really where we began. Rose what was the average age of the three of you. The average age, we were all, i believe, 27, maybe 28. No, wait, thats not true. We have been working on this for so long. We were, like, 26. We were really young. Rose still are. Thank you. Rose you have to make sure that we explore him and all hes done and the lies hes telling yet at the same time make him a character that people dont reject. Certainly. I think that was always from the beginning of development, i came on board three years ago, was the focus on my part and stephen and i together was making sure that the audience understood at every turn why he was making the decisions he have making and you were seeing it was all coming from a place of Good Intention and wanting to heal and help people and i think one of the most effective things about the show is the first 12 or 15 minutes when you get to meet evan and see him give his first monologue and sing his first song, you get an idea of the kid and how deep a hole hes in and how in need of a savior he is so you understand why he false into this light because its so perfectly presented to him. Rose is he a savior at some point. I think on some level it ends up being a savior and forces him to connect in a way he never has but also a dark side in facing his demons and not liking who he sees in the mirror, but at the end of the day it starts a conversation with him and his mother. It seems to bust the door open for conversations. Thats what it does for even. Rose congratulations on the nomination. Thank you so much. Rose when you write the book, what does that mean . It means essentially my responsibility is partly to structure things, to kind of come up with the road map, and then all the dialogue. What it meant in this case because we had no source material. Often you have a book or a movie. Benj, justin and i came up together with the rudiments of a sterned some characters, then i went off and wrote the first act as though it were a play and left spaces where the three of us had decided songs might go. Then i sent them that draft, and they looked at it and said, okay, well, here, where we thought there would be a song, actually i think the song comes earlier so the scene needs to be shorter or longer. So its a lot of its kind of building the skeleton. Rose how do you explain the resonance it has other than great acting i think it accurately without filter or lens depict the contemporary world and the way people are connecting and the way social media plays into that and doesnt make too harsh of a judgment on it, just sorts of presents it how it is and how we connect as humesens. I think even as a universallality as far as his loneliness and his desire to reach out and be reached out to. I think everyone in the show can go on this journey with him not only because its beautifully written that he has selfeffacing humor and has beautiful songs and a beautiful character but people find themselves in him. Rose this is what your mother talked and the New York Times. She says i contemplate bens emotional state every day and how much time he spends alone. Hes only 23 and should be with friends. How proud can a moth were. Shes the most beautiful human being on the earth. This is a demanding role. I take it seriously, the responsibility to curate this evening and to create it eight times a week and give the same kind of emotional intensity and make sure the audience is having identical experience as possible and that requires a loft me as far as sacrificing social life and my lifestyle gets really affected but, of course, this is the kind of piece that is so beauty any written and so deeply felt that you want to give yourself to it and make the sacrifices to it because they dont come along all the time especially musical theater. Rose you have been working with the same actors for years . Yes, in the First Reading four of the actors were in it. Rose has it cause to change the writing . These actors helped shaped the material, absolutely, especially ben with this character. I think part of the reason the show resonates is bens per force is so specific and its that strange paradox of specificity. The more specificity, the more universality. Ben and i have had conversations where hell do something, i respond to it in writing and h he response in performance. Thats been a pleasure. Rose . One of the things stephen does brilliantly is finding things in ourselves that were not noticing and they wind up beautifully flushed out in the writing and really taking advantage of the performers he has and what comes naturally and honestly to them. Thats what i feel makes the characters feel beautifully honest is he uses the seeds of that to create a big idea. Rose i feel as long as i do this role, everything i have to do is to be in the servicer of that. I dont want a Single Person to leave without getting what i have the to offer. I dont feel anything can be so jen or powerful that is not taking a toll. I am definitely willing to take the toll, whatever it might be. Is there a toll . Is the endurance of doing it and the requirements of singing that much and the demands on you to perform at the center of this . Sure. The literal toll would be the physical and vocal demands and the physical therapy lessons. Theres an emotional toll to go to such a dark place eight times a week and make it as real as possible is not always the easiest thing to do particularly if its an audience thats a little bit less responsive or a day thats a little lower on energy. Rose you can foal that if theyre less responsive. Sure, the beautiful piece about the piece is people go on a journey every night. By virtue of anything from the weather to whats going on in the world to the age of the people in the crowd sometimes it takes them a little longer to get on the ride and theyre not as vocal. Rose what do you do if you sense that . Try not to push. I think the instinct is always to sort of go harder and to try to win them, but i think the great thing is the material is fantastic and its specific and beat to beat and so if you lay back and let the show do its job and sort of not try to slam on the acceleration then they come to you eventually. Rose thats a very good way of putting it. The cast singing you will be found. When you need a friend to carry you when youre broken on the ground. You will be found. So let the sun come streaming in you open your eyes again if you only look around you will be found you will be found you will be found you will be found. Rose yeah, i asked whats the average age of the cast you said somewhere in the middle. Weve got five people in there early to mid 20s playing teenagers and then we have adults most of them in their mid 40s playing the parents. Rose you never show him in therapy, though, do you . No. Rose why not . You know, i think we wanted to get to know eve evan with him especially. Thats the way we want to get to know the character and the lens through which we see him. Therapy tends to be boring to writers because theyre so reductive in a way. Its sort of like writing an interview, you know where, you have one character whose job is to really just say, and how does that make you feel . So whereas with his mom or his peers, theres a level of unpredictability that forces evan rose and a higher level of engagement, too. Absolutely, yes. Rose it runs how long . Indefinitely. Tilt end of the world. Rose yes, its indefinitely. Does it give you any time to do anything else . Not really. We have mondays off. Rose this is not a theme on my part. laughter we have mondays off, i try to spend that doing restful, nice things. But, you know, this is a really exciting time and its i love being inundated in it, its obviously temporary and i want to take it as it comes. Rose because its become such a sensation here, are you getting advice from other people who have also conquered the new york musical stage . Sure, we have a lot of actors that come and ill get to see them afterwards and theyll offer their pieces of rose their congratulations. The thing about the show is people are moved at the end and feel really opened up. So when i get to interact with people whether other actors or people at the stage door, everybody is so effusive and wanting to be old with me because they feel weve had a shared morguesle experience so thats my favorite time to talk to people. But also to do selfcare so i can be a human being. Rose only us eevan singing with his girlfriend. It will be us it will with us and only us and what came before wont count anymore you and me e thats all that we needed to be and the rest of the world falls away and the rest of the world falls away rose congratulations. Thank you very much. Rose this is terrific. Thanks. Rose glad to have you here. Stephen, thank you very much. Thank you. Rose well be right back. Stay with us. Rose Cynthia Nixon is here. She is an emmy, tony and grammyaward winning actress currently starring along lawyeria lenny in a revival of the little foxes on broadway. Nixon and lenny alternate in the lead role of regina and supporting role of birdie. Birdie performance earned nixon her fourth tony nomination. Heres a look at her in that role. Aunt birdie. Why did you marry uncle oscar . I dont know. I thought i liked him. And he was so kind to me. And i taut that was because he liked me, too. But that wasnt the reason. Ask why he married me. I could tell you that. Hes told me often enough. Miss birdie, dont. Y family was good and the cotton on the fields was better. Ben hubbard wanted the cotton and Oscar Hubbard married it for him. He used to be nice to me then. He used to smile at me. He hasnt smiled at me since. Everybody knew thats what he married me for. Everybody but me. Stupid stupid me rose nixon also stars in terrance davids new film a quiet passion as Emily Dickinson, the renowned 19t 19th century poet. Pleased to have Cynthia Nixon back at this table. Welcome. Thank you i. Rose i only saw this once before in true west when actors alternate roles. But that was a twoperson play. Eyes, and there was a big 19th and early 20th century of two actors doing a fellow and alternating. Not so much anymore. Rose laura lenny comes up with the idea. Yes. Rose and say what do you think of this. Yeah. Rose and you bought it right away. Right away is that why . Because of the challenge . Well, i love the play. Ive always loved the idea of playing regina, but as laura, i think herself felt, birdie was a treasure of a role albeit a smaller role. Ive worked with laura on television but never on stage, so the chance to work with her on this play with dan sullivan and in this tremendous theatrical experiment which i think women dont get to do very often, men more. Rose part of it is a challenge. Yes. Rose there was a thing about you in college, did two plays at the same time. I did. But this i mean, i think even people who arent intending to come twice, often they come and see it one way and then they say, well, i have to come back because the roles are so different, once you see us in the first way, its sort of impossible to imagine us if the second way, and i think there are also because the play is so meaty itself and so many people dont know the play before they come, giving the audience a chance to hear it twice, i think they absorb a lot more of the nuances of it. Rose did you think you were going to play birdie first . Was that your first instinct . No. When they called me, it was with this offer. Rose oh, i see. Yeah. So. Rose when you watch her yes. Rose in a role that youve just played yes. Rose do you see insights into the character that maybe you hadnt seen. I do. I see things i can steal and i steal them when i can. And i think it was harder for us both when we were first rehearsing it, but now i think that we have our own characterizations and were more secure in them. Again, still i find Little Things like, oh, thats interesting, either i can take it or it helps me understand another dimension of the character. Rose which character do you identify with most . Well, its hard to identify with regina. Rose yeah, of course. You know, birdie is a much more empathetic and sympathetic character, albeit a sadder one. So i think birdie is easier to relate to, which is, i think, part of the reason laura came up with the idea in the first place. She said i understand birdie and i can relate to birdie. Regina is kind of foreign territory to me. Rose this is what the New York Times said. In most roles, ms. Nixon has a steely quality. Ms. Lennys effect is more yielding. Ms. Nixon plays reginas deviousness from the start which is a treat, but ms. Lenny keeps it concealed for a while which makes a stinging surprise. When it comes to melty mush silly, birdie, bullied and beaten by her husband, ms. Lenny uses her sweeten to effect while ms. Nixons heartbreaking twitters and fluters, layering birdies pain with a complicated selfloathing. Sounds pretty good. Sounds pretty good. Rose do you recognize that, though, when they say that . I mean, i think thats one of the things that i feel that birdie, you know, you want to think that birdie had this very happy childhood and then was hoodwinked into marrying this man whos very cruel to her, but i think the roots of her insecurity and her pain come in her childhood. She talks about her mother and has only really great things to say about her mother but she always talks about what a ninny she is and how her mothers always laughing at her, and i think that feeling that birdie has right from, you know, the beginning about, oh, im so silly, so dumb, whatever, i think she got that message from her mother early on whether she knows it or not. Rose how do they view each other . I think one of the sort of disappointing things about our experiment is they dont deal with each other much. We dont have a lot of scenes together. I think, in effect, they dont really matter to each other. I think there are certain things that each admire about the other, but i think there are air aias of disapproval of each other are greater than their areas of approval. Rose when did you make the Emily Dickinson a quiet passion . Two years ago, we made it in belgium. We recreated the dickinson home s. T. D. In a antwerp i never thought i would get to play Emily Dickinson. It was daunting to play such a brilliant person, but i think ive always felt a lot of identification with her. So it was less daunting because of that. Rose and there had never been other movies about her . Well, there was the one person play the belle of am amht in the 70s. But its certainly not a film. Its more of a i dont know, its not a real exploration. Its more of a character study. Rose she had dismissive opinions about marriage. How would you characterize it. Well, i wouldnt characterize them as dismissive. I think she had two main things one, of them was she was terrified that she would die in childbirth and i think that was such a reality around her and it was such a strong possibility in those days, and i think the other thing was she knew that she really wanted to write, and she knew that if she was a wife or a wife and mother, they would not have afforded the hours in a day much less a husband who would even permit that . Rose beyond the poetry, what else do you admire about her . I admire certainly the determination to shut her self in her room day after day, decade after decade and to write about to be so true to a voice that was so out of keeping with her time. Its much more her voice seems much more at home in our modern world. I mean, she prefigures modernism and theres so much poetry of that era thats so flowery and goes on page after page and her poetry is so pear and distilled and i think that takes a great amount of discipline. Rose she talked about got a fair amount. Whether there is a got, what death means, if there is an afterlife, if there is a hell, what causes us to be sent there, and i think she talked about a lot of us in eternity that were afraid of and she looked at them so unstintingly and asked herself hard, hard painful questions. Rose when you do Something Like that film do you read the poetry . I didnt read all 1800, but i tried to read as many as i could, and i tried to read the betterknown ones and tried to read in each period. Shes like picasso. You can sort of recognize her but she is so dont period to period. Rose which period did you like the most . Well, i think when i was young, i liked more of the rapturous stuff, you know, about nature and the wonders of the natural world. Then when i was a little older, i think i loved the sort of heart osik, impossible love, forbidden love, thwarted love stuff. But now that im over 50, i really like the ones that are much more, you know, looking at eternity and in such a profound way. I feel like theyre less rapturous but theyre sign sightful. Rose she theyre so insightful. Rose she had a sense of humor. Yes. This is important to terrence that this not be a stately masterpiece theater. She was a rebel but she had anger and humor with which she saw the world. It might be a painful humor but a humor as a person viewing the distance between how things are and how we think things are supposed to be. Rose did her feelings about sexuality play into her isolationism . Ates complicated question. I think she was a person who craved miewn yon of every kind so strong will you but i think she felt things so deeply that proximity to people was too difficult and i think the idea of giving herself to one person. I mean, she has all these love affairs and we dont know if they have a physical component or not or theyre just on paper and, you know, but i think the idea of giving herself to someone physically or at least in the long term was too much, that that loss of herself was something that was too frightening to her. Rose heres an excerpt. Heres a piece. This is where she is reciting up with of her poems. Roll tape. I reckon, when i count out all, first potes, then the sun, then summer, then the heaven of god, and then the list is done. But looking back, the first so seems to comprehend the whole. The others look a needless show. So i write poets all. Their summer lasts a solid year. They can afford a sun the east would deem extravagant. And if the further heaven be beautiful as they prepare for those who worship them, it is too difficult a grace to justify the dream. Rose did she acknowledge her attraction to her sisterinlaw . I think so. I mean, the thing aboutumlys relationship with susan the thing about emilys relationship with susan, this is not in the film, whatever great love the two had for each other it prefigured her being the sisterinlaw. Emily was attached to susan before susan and emilys brother austin met. The letters seem like romantic love letters, at least to our modern eye, and emily seems to have had a hope, a plan the two women would live together through their life. That was thwarted. Emily went through a lot of different feelings about susan in her life and sometimes she viewed her as an enemy, certainly, a very duplicitous enemy, but i think its very noteworthy that when emily sent someone a po it was all dressed up with flowers and presented almost with a bit of japanese finery, with that level of ceremony about it. Susan is the only one she would send her poetry to written in pencil meaning i want your feedback and it will go into what i eventually do with this poem. Rose would she have been better in another era . Its so hard to say. I mean, in a funny way, i think that she would have been i think she would have been an outsider whatever era she was in. She was not a joiner, emily. But i do think that, in some ways, our modern world, which affords you so much connection but at such a remove, i think she would have been very happy on email or twitter. Rose as you understood this role, as you began to portray her and thought about her life, did you see some of yourself in her . You know, i think rose or her in you . I think that when i was young, i thought i saw a lot of myself in her. But i think it was a very surfacey idea of who she was. I thought, heres a person whos deeply interesting but presents an outward show of shyness but saying to the world come and talk to me im so fascinating if you only take the trouble to get to know me. But i think i didnt understand when i was young the depth of her isolation, and im certainly a very unisolated person. Rose you certainly are. Yes. Rose we can say that at at least. Yes. Rose i want to go back to little foxes and one other scene here. This is you as regina conspiring with two brothers. Here it is. Good morning, ben. Fine sunny morning. Any news from the rainwear is this. Theres no news or you would have heard it. A convention so flirl the morning, arent you all . Youre rising mighty late these days. Is that the way they do things in chicago . Cart died . Centerville. 81. Soon be time for us all. What do you thinks really happened to horace, regina . Nothing. You dont think he never started from baltimore, never intended to start . Of course they started. Didnt i have a letter from alexandra . What is so strange about people arriving late . He has that cousin in savannah hes so fond of. Maybe he stopped off to see him. Uhhuh. They will be along today some time. Very flattered that you and oscar have been so worried. Natural worier especially when im getting ready to close a wiz deal and one of my partners remanses silent and invisible. I thought you were worried about horaces health. That, too. Who could help but be worried. Im worried. This is the first day i havent shot since my head cold. And you havent had your breakfast. Come along. Rose where did the voice come from . The voice . Do you mean the accent . Rose yes. I mean, how did you practice that . How did you decide thats the right note for her . Well, i mean, uh, as the performances have gone on because, of course, thats footage taken very early in previews is that it has changed to what . It has changed to well, i think reginas gotten a lot deeper, and i think birdies got an lot lighter. One person is very assured, and one person is so eager to please and so fearful that she wont. Rose good to have you. Thank you. Thank you. Rose i should mention, little foxes as she said plays till july 2 at the samuel j. Freedman theater. Well be right back. Stay with us. Rose irving penn was one of the most influential and celebrated photographers to have the century, career spans almost seven decades and best known for working at voguehmagazine. His early photographs of couture are considered master pieces, yet form and biewdy, bore traitture and nudes. His exhibit at metropolitan museum of art marks the centennial of his birth. Jeff rosenheim is the curator in charge of the museum and organized the exhibition and were fortunate to have him joining me now. This is something. Pleasure to be on your program. Rose tell me about irving penn. He is one of the greatest picture makers of the century. We knew a lot about penn. His work appeared in vogue. 165 covers alone. He worked every day. His work ethic was amazing. Ive had the pleasure to do lots of shows. Works on robert frank, walker evans. Rose right. William eggleston. But theres something about penn that i didnt understand which is that, while he was making those great passion portraits that you know, while he was doing to pictures, portraits of citizens, the small trades or petite, he was making great still lives and extraordinary prints. He was a great imagemaker but he was a splendid objectmaker and thats the story that comes out of the show. Rose still life were in color and all the portraiture most of the portraiture is in black and white except cover images. But he shot color and black and white simultaneously. Thats its own story. What does a picture in color look like in the mag sine and how could he trueness form it later on in his life to an extraordinary black and white print and we learn from seeing it on the walls of the museum. Rose whats the challenge to put together this kind of exhibition . You can do it chronologically, thats easy. Ewe had to focus on, for someone who worked almost 70 years, we had to focus on the most sailient moments of his career, otherwise the show would have 6 or 7,000 photographs. No one can appreciate that. We had the to synthesize. I did this with me colleague who hired me 30 years ago at the met. It was like bringing her back in. We are told you cant step into the same river twice but she was able to do it. She called me on the phone one day and kind of whisper in my ear, might want to call tom penn, irving penns son, looking for something to honor the centennial of the artists birth. That led to a conversation and that conversation led to a visit to an amazing facility that has the lifes work of irving penn, and i was treated to months of about a year of just looking at pictures. Thats how we did it by looking at the pictures. Rose they spoke to you. They spoke to us. Rose is it some kind of a bark. First of all, one of the things i got from it is he started as painter and draftsman 6789 he was trained in tarts and art school and came to photography through a sort of set of circumstances. But drawing and the idea of the silhouette and the idea of a sculptors style of making a picture where the photograph is put together in an interesting way, all of that in the line of still life is something you can see over the 70 years. Take a look at some of these. People have seen some of these photographs where they have recognized from seeing before. Im sure they will. After dinner games. Ah, there it is. This is a picture made like no other i know. It ran in 1947. It is a color image. Its put together in an interesting way. You can see the doubling cube from backgammon where you see the 6 and the 4, and the die with the 6 and the 4 pips, and the domino with the two 5s adding up to 10. Everything is connected one form to the other, one color to the other. It requires the eye to move around to complete the competition. Thats the game. Thats the afterdinner game. The afterdinner game is trying to understand this picture. This is from the beginning of his career. Rose next one is cigarettes 37. So we have an entire room of pictures of butts that penn collected like a butterfly collector on the streets of manhattan in brooklyn. He and his studio assistants used tweezers and picked them damp out of the gutter. Penn brought them into the studio and, in between other projects, he would put them together, mixing in this case chesterfield and ca camel, and creating forms that had no life until he brought them together. Then, this again, this still life is coming through this life time of experience. These are from 1972. If a certain sense, its an homage to his friendship to lexi broadovich. Broadovich brings him to new york, i think they work on the saks account together. They raised enough money to buy a camera and it served him the rest of his career. Rose deli package. Its common for anyone living in new york city and around the world, but its been smashed by time and drugs and pedestrians and its soiled and penn loved the idea of the form which is part of a twoheaded camel but we all know it as a deli package. Penn brought it into the studio and developed a camera technique to reveal it. Its smashed to the ground, then this exploagd dirt. It has a fabulous object value. Its a platinum print. Penn didnt just accept printmaking as he inherited. He transformed it. He used older processes and makes pictures that photographers and everyone else fall in love with. Rose Roberta Smith i think said did he that he obliterated the line between art and commerce. I think you can see it throughout the work, and i think what she was saying, and i think i can understand why that is, he basically understood the page of the magazine. He understood what a power picture would sit in ink in a magazine, and he demanded that it stop traffic. And by doing so, he applied all the training in art to the challenge. I mean, he was basically a vogue photographer for over 60 years. Most of his pictures in the show were seen there. Yet, he was able to make prints on his own that have other qualities. Thats the art. Rose the next thing is called fish monger. There is one of my favorite photographs. In between portrait sessions and couture sessions with the most beautiful models of the day, penn had his assistants bring in individuals from the streets, and he photographed them against the same neutral backdrop. Here we are in london, its 1950, and i love this project which is to look at individuals with the tools of their trade. Here is the fishmonger with his towel and apron and the catch, and, obviously, those portraits celebrate the everyday experience of the common man. He treated his portrait subjects, fashion subjects and his small trait subjects with equal love and that love and the beauty that comes from the photographic process gives these individuals a life. Rose what distinguishes his portraiture is this. Well, an understanding of the simple pleasure of the interaction between one individual and another. Theres no lux environments. All thats there is this sort of empty studio, the artist and his subject. So theres this exchange. These are pen was a small tradesman and his trade was photography and these individuals understood that. The fashion world understood he was giving them his as tension, that the studio was quiet. Unlike other photographers working in his day today, it was practically whisper quiet. Individuals felt penns attention eye to eyes on them never wavered and gave birth to an interesting psychological portrait. Its rembrandtian. Rose detrek. Dietrich spent her life before the camera. She was an advocate for fighting against naziism. She was a great singer. She sang for the allied troops. She knew what she wanted when she arrived in penns studio. Penn had to deal with it in one way or the other. She basically said, i though what side i want you to photograph. I know where the light are meant to be and where my body should be and penn had to quiet risay, for this experiment, why continue you be the subject and ill be the photographer . And she turned around and gave this look rose and it worked. And it worked. Rose and theres the photograph. Theres the proof. Rose . Rose she did the wonderful documentary where they photographed her inside an apartment, the door was open but you never saw her and the interview took place without seeing here. Crazy. Shes a powerful figure. Shes popular with todays young people as shes a genderbending young hero and she has the chance to be one of the more transformative figures of the mid 20th century now. Rose this is mouth for lawyer yell. Penn was obviously involved in photographing beauty wherever it was and lauriel is stopping traffic. We live in a multitude of images, and as neil de grasse tyson said, theres a multiverse and there is likely a multiverse. Thats where we are with photography today. This exhe bigs looks at an artist that comes out of an analog world but is in the digital world. Rose what is digital photography doing . Making people paying attention to shape and form and what is the role of camera in our society and it changes in every generation and changing now. I think its creating an appreciation for the old analog world, our world and creating a belief that photography has a role in our society. Theres no barriers to entry now. With Digital Tools and iphone and the cellular world in which we live, the digital world, its making pictures better. Its making student journalism better. Rose and its just beginning. I met wan entrepreneur yesterday talking to me about how the whole idea of taking content and being able to put it in an iphone for example and what you could do with that. George lucas said to me i can make a movie with an iphone. Quawlt qualitatively its amazing but just the idea of sharing images like we share stories. Rose i but you the number of autographs i get asked to do, 2 of the time. Well, its kind of an autograph. Its a pictograph. Rose but it just took over. Yeah. Rose and it shows you sort of the power of the visual. More people are looking at photographs that they have made than ever before. Where theyre going, i dont know. Im a little worried about that. We might know less about our time than we knew about the time before digital because people are not saving them or they dont know where theyve saved them. Rose digital gives you capacity because the cloud is saving them in an interesting way. Take a look at these three more then i want to talk more about irving penn. The next one is nude 72. One of his favorite artists was matisse. Penn came out of the art school where drawing nude form was part of the language. When he was still learning the field in 1949, 50, tired of live models who all had the same body type, he brought into his studio figures where graverty played a role. This is a good example. Where there was a fullness of the figure. Artists like fullness. They like to draw rose things that are round that are supple and round. Rose right. And penn was very aware of sort of the history of the nude and he taught himself a hot about lighting and form by just practicing in the studio. Rose next thing is picasso. I just want to show you these. One of the most famous portraits rose is that a great photograph. Picasso, this is photographed in the south of france at picassos home, and penn liked mostly to work in his own studio, but this is one of the great pictures of all time. Rose wow, so great. And penn used the sort of dark cloak that picasso had to create this void that sort of shows the face and all its intensity. Picasso was certainly the most Famous Artist of the day and the meeting between penn and pi case o i would have liked to have been there for that. Rose fly on the wall. Yes. Rose the next one three acero mudmen, here it is. Penn had this idea in the 60s and carried it into the 70s to take his project to sort of distant folks and distant places. Here we are in new guinea. These are acaro mudmen. Penn was great with composition, his ability to pose not just one figure but many is his hallmark of achievement. This is a picture that is stunning. An these figures are posed. Penn posed them by hand. He couldnt speak their language. They couldnt speak his language. He didnt say very much. He just literally went and moved their bodies and turned their forms, and he put the pictures together like he was a painter, like a sculptor, and then he had this great understanding of light. So photography is a light media. Rose they all say that. Penn always wanted to work with north light. He used available light when possible. And those combination of understanding of composition, the balance of light and gravity and its effect is what defines his work. Rose next slide is in fact the great photograph you all foe of truman capote. Here it is. So were at the beginning of penns portrait work. It was a project for vogue and Alexander Lieberman said what can you do with a portrait . We know you can make still life. Penn created a weird set by putting two theater flats together into an awe cute corner and eremoved every other element. So it was penn and hid subject, and capote just published his first stories. Hes leaning into the washington on the floor, its basically threads of carpet. Its not clean, per se, but in this space and in the controlled environment, we have a psychological portrayed that not only stands the test of time but mix you sort of feel like capote was already a master of his own craft and penn, too. Rose he drove an ambulance in italy during worl world war. Yeah, so penn started the wax basically, in started the war, basically, in mex coavment he left mexico for pearl harbor and was there to paint for a year. He came back, almost immediately went to war. He like many others rho learned photography found themselves in the signal corps and other fields where the camera could play a role. Thats how penn learned a lot about photography. Rose he wanted very much to be seen as an artist. And he was. I think anyone in his presence who had the pleasure of meeting him knew he was one of the more thoughtful, more generous of individuals. His dedication to working with his studio assistants and sharing the experience of being an artist is really a distinguishing quality. Rose go ahead. No, his pictures are beloved, not just in the fashion world, in the portrait world, in the photography world, but i would say that most people who Pay Attention to the 20th century in anin any area have found they to penn. They couldnt wait to find those pictures in vogue when they came out. Rose he lived into old age. Yeah, he died in he died at 92 in 2009. Pretty much yesterday. Rose seems like it. He emerged in the 30s in the depresmghts lived through the isolationist 50s, moved and aced to the age of aquarius and ended up in the digital world. Rose he was said to be an astute estate planner. He was very careful, and the foundation that now works to promote his work likely was given a great legacy, and, you know, the metropolitan museum where the show is, we have been showing his work since 1959, so he was part of the mets collection very early observe. This is our third major show of his work. He was a student of art. He arrived in new york when moma was showing those great artists who were emerging and escaping the horrors of war in europe, and he learned from the moment that cubism and surrealism moved into realism and abstract expressionism, he followed those movements and was part of them. Rose the cover of the book, the accompanying book to the exhibition at the metropolitan museum of art here, will be so till july 30th. Thats right. Rose jeff, thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. Rose thank you for joining us. See you next time. For more about this program and earlier episodes, visit us online at pbs. Org and charlierose. Com. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications captioned by Media Access Group at wgbh access. Wgbh. Org rose funding for charlie rose has been provided by and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Youre watching pbs. Announcer this is nightly Business Report with Tyler Mathisen exclusive club. Amazon does something few have done before. It hit 1,000 a share. But is it worth buying even at this pricey level . Increased pressure. Can the recent issues with the airlines be traced back to wall street demand . Hard lessons. Sky high proposal prices in americas tech hub are making it tough on teachers. Those stories and more tonight on nightly Business Report for tuesday, may 30. Good evening, everyone, and welcome. Im sue herera. Tyler mathisen is off tonight. Amazon, the company that revolutionized the way people shop, can add another milestone to its resume. Sh