Small Trades

by Irving Penn

Photographer Irving Penn is renowned for his innovative contributions to portrait, still life, and fashion photography, and a career that spanned more than six decades at Vogue magazine.  In 1950, Vogue assigned Penn to photograph workers in Paris, and thus his monumental work Small Trades began.  Created in 1950 and 1951 in Paris, London and New York, Small Trades consists of portraits of skilled tradespeople dressed in their work clothes and carrying the tools of their respective trades. Capturing the humble coal heaver and the crisply dressed waiter with equal directness, Penn’s arresting portraits also underscore fascinating cultural differences.

Small Trades was Penn’s most extensive body of work to which he returned over many decades producing ever more exacting prints. Two hundred-six unique images from the series are flawlessly reproduced in this book.  In addition, the introductory essay describes the history and context of the Small Trades series and its importance to Penn’s career and the history of photography.  An interview with Edmonde Charles-Roux, the chief editor for French Vogue from 1952 to 1966, who assisted Penn on the assignment in Paris, provides fascinating insights of the Paris sittings. 

Genres: Photography, Art, Nonfiction

272 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Irving Penn was an American photographer known for his portraiture and fashion photography.

Reviews

[Grady · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Praise of the Common Man

Irving Penn is an established giant in the field of photography having supplied the editors of Vogue Magazine with his elegant fashion photography for over fifty years. While many would question such a famous glamour photographer's interest in the beauty of the common man, in this excellent volume, a catalogue from the current J. Paul Getty Museum exhibition curated by Virginia A. Heckert and Anne Lacoste, evidence is presented and takes a memory trip back to the years 1950 and 1951 when Penn focused his considerable talent on photographing the people who do the daily jobs considered less than glamorous in the cities of New York, London and Paris.

Using the studio setting in much the way his fashion images were created, Penn uses for each of these portraits a textured wall that captures an array of light and shadow in subtle ways and in front of this backdrop he invited bakers, cleaners, maids, and craftsmen of all trades to pose, face forward, alone and in pairs, and gives these simple 'models' the same treatment of dramatic light and shadow eloquence that had made him famous. The results are an embarrassment of riches of capturing the most genteel vision of 'Small Trades' available in one collection. This is a book of beautiful art as well as an appreciation of the people who make our lives work smoothly. A fine reminder of Irving Penn's enormous talent.

Grady Harp

[Mg O'Brien · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exceptional reproductions of a landmark series of photos made in black and white by Irving Penn. The series, shot mainly in Paris, portrays tradesmen from the mid twentieth century.

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.).

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.

[Elaine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful photos!