Getty Museum Acquires Penn Photographs
By Ryan • Feb 7th, 2008 • Category: News for Creatives (archives), PhotographyBy Randy Kennedy of the New York Times:
“The subjects of the velvety black-and-white pictures are not exactly Irving Penn’s elegantly dressed, or undressed, regulars: a plump charwoman with her bucket and brush; a bespectacled seamstress draped with her measuring tape; a deep-sea diver disappearing into his monstrous helmet and suit.
But Mr. Penn considered these blue-collar portraits, called “The Small Trades,” some of the most important of his long and influential career. He began taking them in the summer of 1950 for Vogue, the magazine with which he has become synonymous, and now they have finally found a home together at a museum. On Wednesday the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles announced that it had acquired the entire series, 252 full-length portraits of workers — waiters, bakers, butchers, rag-and-bone men — that it called Mr. Penn’s most extensive body of work.
“This is a set of images that the Getty has been thinking about and wanting to get for several years,” said Virginia Heckert, an associate photography curator at the Getty, who helped negotiate a deal with Mr. Penn, who sold some of the pictures and donated others. “In the last year it finally managed to come together. It’s a very exciting acquisition for us.”
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