Passage. a work record

Penn, Irving

ISBN 10: 0679404910 / ISBN 13: 9780679404910

Published by Knopf, New York, 1991

About this Item

First Edition. Hardcover. Produced by Nicholas Callaway with the collaboration of Alexandra Arrowsmith and Nicola Majocchi. Introduction by Alexander Liberman. "At age 74, reflecting on a career that spans more than half a century, one of the foremost photographers of our time has brought together for this book the images that most powerfully speak for him over the years. He has accompanied them with his own recollections.In all, Passage brings us 468 images, of which 71 are in color." The photographer's third and most comprehensive retrospective collection. Photographic fidelity was maintained for this edition by printing the book in eleven impressions produced by Callaway Editions. A pristine copy of an increasingly scarce volume. Tight, bright and unmarred. DJ clean and bright. Beige cloth boards, black ink lettering. 300pp. 1.25 x 12.75 x 11.25. Illus. (color and b/w plates).

Seller Inventory # 759

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Passage. a work record
• Publisher: Knopf, New York
• Publication Date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0679404910
• ISBN 13: 9780679404910
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First Edition.
• Condition: Fine in Fine DJ
• Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included
• Seller catalogs:
  • Photography
  • Americana
  • Photography & Art

About this title

Synopsis

A retrospective of Penn's portraits, fashion photography, and still lifes

Reviews

Penn, 74, selected the memorable images in this career retrospective in collaboration with Callaway Editions editors Arrowsmith and Majocchi. His photo-portraits (Auden, Chagall, Hitchcock, Spencer Tracy, Marlene Dietrich et al.) seem to spring out of a conspiratorial partnership with his sitters. He also has done impressionistic advertising photography that Corot might envy. Painterly still lifes are as provocative as the anatomically probing nudes. Penn's continually surprising imagination turns to animal skulls, cigarette butts, multicolored lips, street garbage--odd mementos to "the ultimate sadness of all vanity," as Liberman, editorial director of Conde Nast, writes in his perceptive introduction. Along with a steady stream of fashion photography that resembles a species of cultural anthropology, Penn, as we see here, has recently done powerful color drawings in a biomorphic cubist style. This album includes 71 tipped-in color plates and 397 black-and-whites, along with Penn's running commentary. The printing is of superb quality.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In 1941 Penn, then an associate in Vogue 's art department handling the magazine's layouts, was encouraged by Alexander Lieberman to pick up a camera and do the actual photography instead. Since then, he has been producing images at once penetrating and mysterious. While Penn's incisive portraits of both the famous and the unknown--particularly ethnic peoples he posed carefully in studios--capture the specifics even as he renders the sitters timeless, his graceful yet boldly inventive fashion photography has gone far beyond the standard expectations of that genre. In fact, perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this overview is its demonstration that, in the hands of a master, the line between fashion photography and art photography simply does not exist. Penn provides some rather brief commentary on the images displayed here, but the photographs themselves--thoughtfully laid out, beautifully reproduced--make the book. For all libraries that collect photography books seriously.
- Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.