Irving Penn: Small Trades, Big Pride

 

The previous couple of posts highlighted the gloomy side of labor, but those shouldn't dissuade you from the idea of manual labor or work in general. Both Lewis Hine and Sebastião Salgado sought to expose the hardships faced by laborers in their working environment, but Irving Penn's Small Trades project created half a century ago illustrates the exact opposite by portraying these workers in a beautiful light.

The entire Small Trades collection comprises 252 full length portraits done by Mr. Penn and shows off different professions in a simple studio setting. There is a noticeable absence of women in the series, but that shouldn't detract from the ingenuity of this phenomenal work.

The project started in 1950 in a studio in Paris. Mr. Penn was one of the most sought after fashion photographers of his time and the idea of photographing ordinary workers would seem strange given that he was used to shooting glamorous models for fashion magazines.

Working on assignment for Vogue magazine, he began photographing different people working on the Parisian streets. When he got back to New York, he continued this series and later on expanded to London. Part of the allure of this collection is that save for the captions and other tell-tale signs, the portraits are homogeneous; it's as if all the subjects worked in the same giant city.

Unlike the previous works of Hine and the Salgado, these photographs were taken in the studio, in the signature look of Mr. Penn; black-and-white with a single large light source coming from one side. Often times, this was natural light coming from a skylight above and windows to the side.

You would think that taken out of their comfort zone (their work place) and placed in a photographer's studio that these people would look rather uncomfortable. On the contrary, armed with their working tools or simply dressed in their uniform, they look confidently into the camera. It becomes quite clear that these men and women are proud not only to be in their respective vocations but also to be photographed as a representative of their livelihood as well.

 

This poise and self-respect is probably why Mr. Penn continued to photograph over a 250 of these workers. Instead of feeling sorry for them in their small trade, viewers can sense the quite pride that they have for their chosen profession.

These are the people that you would normally interact with for only a few minutes or even a few seconds in any given day, yet their simple acts of service or the products they sell all help to move and give life to the city that they live in. From the classiest restaurants to the less enchanting abattoirs, all of these men and women contribute to society, and they want you to know that they are proud of that fact.

Here is a short New York Times audio slide show and article on Irving Penn's Small Trades which were made to coincide with the 2009 exhibit at the J. Paul Getty Museum. You can get the book Irving Penn: Small Trades or Mr. Penn's other works: Still Life : Irving Penn Photographs, 1938-2000, Irving Penn Portraits, and A Notebook at Random.