Still Life.

PENN, Irving.

$475.00

Item Number: 4324

New York: Bullfinch Press, 2001.

First edition of this collection of photographs. Tall quarto, original beige cloth, illustrated throughout. Signed by Irving Penn on the half-title page. Fine in a fine dust jacket.

Irving Penn was an internationally known American photographer who became popular for his work in fashion photography. He worked at Vogue magazine, and he photographed for Issey Miayke and Clinique. His work serves as an example of excellent photography even today. Irving Penn said befittingly of his work, "[s]ensitive people faced with the prospect of a camera portrait put on a face they think is one they would like to show the world. Very often what lies behind the facade is rare and more wonderful than the subject knows or dares to believe" (1975). His photography is reverently held at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, both of which also hold collections of personal materials that relate to Penn's career. Ninety-eight of Penn's greatest images (45 color, 50 tritone, 3 duotone) are assembled in Still Life, a publication personally supervised by the artist. Still making funny, strange and lovely editorial photographs for Vogue and other magazines (an ant crawls on a melted Brie; a mannequin gazes out from under a bell jar), Penn also continues to experiment in his personal work: components of traditional still-life paintings like skulls, fish, paintbrushes and dice, for instance, arranged artfully and bizarrely, shot in black and white (Publisher's Weekly).