Irving Penn started at Vogue in 1943. After proving his talent as a still life and portrait photographer, Penn was eased into fashion work by Alexander Liberman, who instructed the usually jeans and sneakers–clad lensman to “buy an evening jacket and attend ‘the collections.’ ” Penn made his couture debut in 1950, photographing the latest fashion in a rickety studio—a former photography school, appropriately—furnished with a discarded theatrical curtain and infused with, Penn wrote, “the light of Paris as I had imagined it, soft but defining.” Penn made use of this light to interpret couture in photographs that became immediately iconic.

In honor of “Irving Penn: The Centennial” opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, we chart more of the great photographer’s career, by the numbers: here.