?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 15,000 - $ 25,000
IRVING PENN (1917-2009) Cuzco Children, Peru. Silver print, the image measuring 11⅛x10⅝ inches (28.3x27 cm.), the sheet 14x11 inches (35.6x27.9 cm.), with Penn's signature, title, negative number, negative date, and initialed printing notations "print made January 1949" in ink, and reference number in pencil, and his credit stamps (2), copyright stamps (3, one also with the negative date with Penn's notations), and edition limitation stamp "signed silver prints of this negative not exceeding 23," on verso. 1948
Provenance: Houk Gallery, Chicago; to the Collection of Dr. James and Debra Pearl
In just three days in a rented local studio in Cuzco, Peru, Penn shot an astonishing 2,000 frames, including multiple images of the children in this portrait. He wrote that, "When subjects arrived to be photographed they found me instead of [the proprietor]. Instead of them paying me, I paid them for posing, a very confusing affair." The following year, in 1949, Vogue published 11 of these portraits. They are now considered among Penn's most important, a documentation project that he called "records of physical presence."
While often characterized as ethnographic, Penn's approach to this body of work was largely in keeping with his fashion and editorial imagery, portraying his subjects with attention to their individuality and with minimal ornamental distraction. His preference for natural light beautifully illuminates his subjects' faces, here lending the scene a reverent, pious stillness, and the neutral background elevates his central figures, recording in exceptional and tactile detail their expressions, attire, and relationships to each other. The whites of the little girl's eyes leap out, confrontational and wary. The little boy exhibits a knowing, unwavering gaze, the pair both unnerving and innocent.
