A photograph by Irving Penn of Jean Patchett for the April 1, 1950 Vogue cover is seen during The Costume Institute's Models As Muse exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York May 4, 2009. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

Celebrity and fashion photographer Irving Penn died Wednesday at 92 in his Manhattan home.

The photographer's death was announced by his assistant, Roger Krueger, the Associated Press reported. The cause of death is not known.

Penn started contributing to Vogue magazine in 1943 and became one of the first commercial photographers to cross the chasm that separated commercial and art photography until the 1970s.

Penn brought the same spare intensity to his portraits of famous men and women. He liked to photograph them in close-up against a bare grey background or in a literal tight corner, an angular wooden enclosure built in his studio.

His celebrity portraits included closely cropped images of Miles Davis, Spencer Tracy, Georgia O'Keeffe and Pablo Picasso, the last peering apprehensively from beneath a wide-brimmed hat.

Penn was not the only one in the family with talent; his younger brother, Arthur Penn, is a filmmaker and directed The Miracle Worker, Bonnie and Clyde and Night Moves.