When I quoted a passage from Proust about the “litanies of the small trades”, Carol mentioned this book of Irving Penn’s photographs of workers in Paris (and also New York and London) from 1950 and 1951. I’d mostly known about Penn’s fashion work or portraits of celebrities and society people (I’m thinking of pictures like this), but clearly he has a broad body of work: fashion photography and portraits, yes, but also pictures like this excellent one of an “on vacation” sign in the window of what I’m guessing is a tailor shop, or this one from the “Underfoot” series.
In the introduction to this book, Virginia A. Heckert and Anne Lacoste write about the background of these pictures, noting that the project was one that Penn had “long envisioned based on his admiration of Eugène Atget’s photographs of workers and the larger, centuries-old tradition of representing the petits-métiers, or “small trades”” (p 10). Penn had two helpers who worked to find potential subjects and bring them to Penn’s studio, dressed in their work clothes and carrying the tools of their trade. I love this description of it: “Enticed by a token payment, sellers of cheese, cucumbers, newspapers, and balloons climbed the six flights of stairs to the rented studio, as did repairers of ceramics, knives, chair cane, shoes, and windows; mailmen, firemen, and coalmen; butchers, bread makers, and pastry chefs” (ibid.).
The 210 photographs reproduced in this book are a mixture of gelatin silver prints and platinum/palladium prints: as the introduction explains, Penn mastered the platinum/palladium process later in his career, and returned to the negatives from this series, sometimes reprinting the same images he’d already made gelatin silver prints of, and sometimes choosing new images entirely. Both are pleasing, but I think I like the gelatin silver ones more: the platinum/palladium prints are often darker, more atmospheric, but I felt like I could see more in the gelatin silver ones. Speaking of seeing: you can see some of the images online at the Getty Museum’s site (here, but seeing them on the screen isn’t as nice as seeing them on paper, and I’m sure seeing them in a book isn’t as good as seeing them in person.
But even in a book, there is lots to like here. I love the detail and specificity of these images, how they capture a vanished world, how tangible it all is, how seeing these workers makes you imagine the cities in which they worked, the Paris where a glazier carries a wooden frame on his back or the New York where a stevedore carries a great big branch bearing more than fifty bananas. The way the subjects are photographed, standing against a simple paper backdrop, means your eye is drawn to the details of the person or his or her clothes or tools: the quizzical expression of the knife grinder with a cigarette in his mouth, the flour-covered shoes of a pair of pastry chefs. Highlights for me: the grace of a white-haired “lady acrobat” standing there holding a trio of hoops; the street photographer with his camera and his cigar, and the humor of that picture—the mirroredness of it; the chestnut vendor with his sign announcing that chestnuts are “GOOD FOR THE BRAIN” (is that a book tucked under his arm?); the busboy at a Parisian restaurant, facing away from the camera, the V of his big white apron mirroring the V of his feet, the folds of a napkin tucked under his arm; a pair of smiling lorry washers, one holding his brush with the bristles up, the other holding his with the bristles down, both of them in thigh-high waders; a Parisian telegraph messenger—with his bicycle, of course. Sometimes it’s the juxtapositions that are wonderful: a woman news seller in London tilts her head and looks assuredly at the camera; at her waist is a rumpled and partly obscured sheet of paper announcing, in big black type, “FOOTBALL RESULTS” and “EVENING NEWS.” This woman has broad shoulders, a hat with a feather in it, and a wide stance; one hand clutches a newspaper and the other’s in her bag, and the overall effect is that she looks like someone used to moving through busy streets. Opposite is a nurse, a younger woman, standing very straight, ankles close, hands clasped, all narrow shoulders and narrow waist, lipstick and a starched collar: someone who looks like her working hours, at least, are much more decorous.
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