Look at Cycloptic Picasso. The peach-like smoothness of the felt of his hat. The texture in his coat. Look deep into that eye. Can you see what Picasso sees? He’s peering out at American photographer Irving Penn, or in reality he’s looking at himself in Penn’s camera lens. In this we have a glimpse of the master painter’s vulnerability: losing control of perception. Suddenly Picasso is abstracted.

In 2002 and 2003, Penn gave the National Gallery of Art 85 platinum/palladium prints such as this, as well as 17 unique collages known as the “Platinum Test Materials” and related archival material, all of which span most of his career from the 1940s to the late 1980s. On view beginning Sunday, at the National Gallery is the first major retrospective of these platinum prints.

The exhibition is elegant and worth taking the time to view. These photographs after all, although iconic, are not the type you would tack to a dorm room wall, but rather frame and place where you can sit and think thoroughly about why is he crying, how does she exude such glamour, where are these hippies now?