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Anonymous
Posted February 14, 2010
Disappointed
Have been waiting since 12/22/09 to receive the book that I ordered. I'm not very happy.
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Anonymous
Posted February 6, 2010
Awesome Compilation
A complete compilation of this series in your home. I saw the show at The Getty and the images as good as you can get in a book form. A great addition to your book collection especially if you are an Irving Penn fan. Aside from that, Penn's series itself is so beautiful it would be interesting to anyone. It's a wonderful snapshot of the era and the under appreciated, mostly extinct or disappearing vocations represented.
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In Praise of the Common Man
Irving Penn is an established giant in the field of photography having supplied the editors of Vogue Magazine with his elegant fashion photography for over fifty years. While many would question such a famous glamour photographer's interest in the beauty of the common man, in this excellent volume, a catalogue from the current J. Paul Getty Museum exhibition curated by Virginia A. Heckert and Anne Lacoste, evidence is presented and takes a memory trip back to the years 1950 and 1951 when Penn focused his considerable talent on photographing the people who do the daily jobs considered less than glamorous in the cities of New York, London and Paris.
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Using the studio setting in much the way his fashion images were created, Penn uses for each of these portraits a textured wall that captures an array of light and shadow in subtle ways and in front of this backdrop he invited bakers, cleaners, maids, and craftsmen of all trades to pose, face forward, alone and in pairs, and gives these simple 'models' the same treatment of dramatic light and shadow eloquence that had made him famous. The results are an embarrassment of riches of capturing the most genteel vision of 'Small Trades' available in one collection. This is a book of beautiful art as well as an appreciation of the people who make our lives work smoothly. A fine reminder of Irving Penn's enormous talent.
Grady Harp