2 min read
By Virginia A Heckert and Anne Lacoste
J. Paul Getty Museum, £34.99
Irving Penn, said one of his assistants, had an entomologist's eye. But Jacob Epstein, to judge from Penn's portrait (taken in London in September 1950) was no stick insect. The sculptor's waistcoat is unbuttoned, as are the collar and cuffs of his shirt, and even the waistband of his pants. It is as though his clothes, stained by stone and plaster, are straining to contain the energy within. His hair seems galvanized by the electricity of his thoughts. This mighty man is clearly the master of his monumental trade.
Three months earlier, in Paris, Penn had embarked upon a project inspired by Eugene Atget's photographs of workers in the petits métiers, or small trades. French Vogue had found him a studio six flights up in what had been the École de Photographie de Paris.
Its only adornment was a canvas backdrop dumped by a local theatre. Before this humble scenery posed beauties in dresses by Dior, Schiaparelli, and Balenciaga; celebrated artists and writers, such as Alberto Giacometti and Blaise Cendras - and workmen, roused from their quotidian tasks by Penn's beaters (one of whom, Robert Doisneau, was destined to become a famous photographer himself). These tradesmen were instructed to come as they were, in their aprons, overalls and uniforms, and to bring the tools of their trade.
Later, in the same studio where he had pinned down Jacob Epstein, Penn photographed chimney sweeps, newspaper sellers, and a coalman, upright but all dusted with soot, like some survivor of a holocaust. As in Paris, so in London, these trades seemed eternal.
Imagining workers of the future, he had constructed the revolutionary, meta-evolutionary Rock Drill, in which man is as mechanical as his machine. Epstein's influence was upon Penn as he photographed the Steel Mill Firefighter: with his face mask, protective gear, and fire extinguisher, he could be the missing link between Joe the Plumber and Epstein's robot.
More characteristic, however, is the portrait of a man with his pneumatic drill. Maybe it is just my fancy, but the man looks to me like a young Jacob Epstein. In any event, he looks equally capable of drilling a hole in the road or carving an angel out of a rock.
This is the great strength of Penn's project, the subject of a current exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery and now this book, in which are collected more than 250 photographs of equal quality.
The book is a work of art in its own right; both an object of beauty, and a Noah's ark for vanishing trades. Penn may have had an entomologist's eye, but this is no catalogue of specimens; it is an encyclopaedia of humanity.
In the study entitled Window Washer and Bohemian Poet (taken in Paris, of course), the latter vocation is given priority, for the sitter is wearing glasses, bow-tie, floppy hat, and a velveteen suit. He has one foot on a stool, and is clearly about to read from a manuscript in his hands. But perhaps that Janus-like quality Penn conveys is best expressed in the image of a glazier, with his back to the camera. He looks like a saint, undergoing a form of crucifixion. Except that a shaft of sunlight is falling diagonally across the glass, like some splash of divinity.
Clive Sinclair's new collection of stories, 'Death & Texas', will be published in 2011