Passage - A Work Record

Alfred A Knopf/Callaway, NY, 1991, 1st Edition, a little foxing on first and last pages and endpapers, and some light grubbiness on white dustwrapper, now protected with a cover to prevent further marking, otherwise pages are clean and bright and binding is excellent.

At age 74, reflecting on a career that spans more than half a century, one of the foremost photographers of our time has brought together for this book the images that most powerfully speak for him over the years. He has accompanied them with his own recollections. Irving Penn's wide-ranging work here richly represented, includes his notable work for Vogue magazine, his portraits of the great, the celebrated, and the anonymous, his images of elegant women in New York and Paris fashions, and his celebrations of men, women and children in faraway villages, jungles and savannahs on five continents. Here, too, are examples of Penn's private research and photographic obsessions - pictures of street refuse, of animal skulls, of the female nude and his momento mori. There is, as well, a group of surprising recent drawings, shown for the first time. In all, Passage brings us 468 images, of which 71 are in colour. Penn's photographs are in the permanent collections of many major museums in America and abroad, including the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C.; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which honoured him with a restrospective exhibition in 1984. This exhibition was later circulated to fifteen museums in twelve countries...