Art Market Monitor

Global Coverage ~ Unique Analysis

  • AMMpro
  • AMM Fantasy Collecting Game
  • Podcast
  • Contact Us

The Photographer as Working Stiff

September 15, 2009 by Marion Maneker

Christopher Knight makes this interesting point about photographers in his review of the Irving Penn show at the Getty Museum called “Irving Penn: Small Trades”:

Irving Penn, Steel Mill Firefighter (1951)
Irving Penn, Steel Mill Firefighter (1951)

A daunting show, given the enormous size, it is also an unusual opportunity for a thorough immersion into one body of work by an influential artist. And it’s strange work. Fashion is often given life by the refined adaptation of street apparel, tribal clothing or workers’ style. Like an anthropologist making an ethnographic study of his own rather than an exotic society, Penn does something similar for formal portrait photography.

Three important 20th century photographers made pictorial catalogs of working-class men and women. French photographer Eugene Atget recorded tradesmen the way he did Versailles’ parks and Paris’ brothels — as signs of inevitable change in the modern era. German photographer August Sander did the same, although he made the documentary aspect of his work crisper, less atmospheric and more dispassionate than Atget did.

For both artists the camera was itself a workman’s tool, his equivalent to the cleaning bucket, tin-snips or carpenter’s hammer wielded by the photographic subjects. Atget was more romantic, filling his pictures with the soft light of long exposures; Sander claimed an objective eye, as if compiling the visual equivalent of a systematic typology.

Yet both created an inescapable analogy between their own labor as a machine-wielding documentarian and the work of the small tradesmen whose pictures they took. Think of them as “tradesmen photographers.”

Art Review: ‘Irving Penn: Small Trades’ at J. Paul Getty Museum (Culture Monster/LA Times)

More from Art Market Monitor

  • Merce Cunningham's Assets Were ArtMerce Cunningham's Assets Were Art
  • Asia’s Private Museums (A Partial List)Asia’s Private Museums (A Partial List)
  • The 49% SolutionThe 49% Solution
  • Chinese Communist Party Wants Culture Industry to GrowChinese Communist Party Wants Culture Industry to Grow
  • "Proud Pussy"-Bravo's Work of Art"Proud Pussy"-Bravo's Work of Art
  • Church of England Contemplating Zurbaran SaleChurch of England Contemplating Zurbaran Sale

Filed Under: Photography

About Marion Maneker

LiveArt

Want to get Art Market Monitor‘s posts sent to you in our email? Sign up below by clicking on the Subscribe button.

  • About Us/ Contact
  • Podcast
  • AMMpro
  • Newsletter
  • FAQ

twitterfacebooksoundcloud
Privacy Policy
Terms & Conditions
California Privacy Rights
Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Advertise on Art Market Monitor
 

Loading Comments...