Friday, February 8, 2008

Getty Museum Acquires Penn Photographs

from www.artinfo.com

The J. Paul Getty Museum has acquired Irving Penn’s most
extensive body of work, The Small Trades, a set of 252 full-length
portraits of tradespeople in natural lighting taken in 1950 and 1951.

The museum plans to exhibit the portraits in September of 2009, displaying
the set in its entirety for the first time. Getty Director Michael Brand
said the museum will "fulfill Mr. Penn’s hopes of keeping the collection
intact and displaying it as a whole work."

One of the most important living photographers, Penn photographed 215
subjects from London, New York, and Paris for the project. It started as an
assignment for Vogue to photograph workers in Paris during the summer of
1950, and he returned to it over many decades to produce ever more exacting
prints.

The acquisition will add to the Getty's collection of portrait photography
and complement a major exhibition of 20th-century German photographer
August Sander's work that will be mounted in May.

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