Irving Penn: Small Trades will be opening next month at the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Getty Center, featuring 252 prints from a series Penn started while on assignment in Paris in 1950.
As a side project, Penn began photographing skilled tradespeople dressed in their customary work attire and equipped with the tools of their trade, with the same style of natural lighting, neutral backdrop and meticulous attention characterizing much of his model and celebrity work. Then during the next 20 years, he experimented with printing methods, including gelatin silver, platinum and palladium, and explored tonalities and effects.
In 2008, the Getty acquired 252 of the best prints from this series, and they will be on view from September 9, 2009 through January 10, 2010. (According to Slate, the museum purchased 125 and Penn donated the rest.) In conjunction with the exhibition, Getty Publications created Irving Penn: Small Trades. It includes all 252 images, with the majority as full-page reproductions.
In addition to the Slate coverage, the September issue of Vogue includes an article by Kennedy Fraser that summarizes Penn’s career and describes images in the Small Trades series, including the above photo of ballroom dance instructors: “The man wears his work clothes, a tuxedo and a clipped mustache like William Powell’s. He looks sleepy and vaguely absent as if after a couple of martinis. The woman dancer, by contrast, is as fierce as a matador...”
Ballroom Dancing Instructors, New York, 1952 | Vogue Magazine, September 2009
The Getty Center | 1200 Getty Center Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90049 | 310 440 7300
No comments:
Post a Comment