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Lot Essay
The photographer has signed and annotated the reverse of mount stating, 'In addition to 40 numbered prints of this image in platinum metals, unnumbered, but signed, silver prints not exceeding a total of 25 may exist.'
This image has become one of the most celebrated in Penn's oeuvre, achieving a deserved status as the quintessence of high fashion refinement expressed with understated visual sophistication and elegance. The picture is from a comprehensive record of the winter Paris couture collections of 1950 that was notably published over two issues of French Vogue in September and October of that year, devoted respectively to 'Le Jour' and 'Le Soir' -- clothes for day and for evening.
Fashion editor Bettina Ballard has described how 'That season we took a big daylight studio up five exceptionally long flights of stairs, with no telephone, no water.' They worked under pressure, 'practically with stop watch in hand,' yet the sessions resulted in 'some of the strongest fashion pictures [Penn] ever took' (In my Fashion, Secker & Warburg, 1960, p.219).
This image has become one of the most celebrated in Penn's oeuvre, achieving a deserved status as the quintessence of high fashion refinement expressed with understated visual sophistication and elegance. The picture is from a comprehensive record of the winter Paris couture collections of 1950 that was notably published over two issues of French Vogue in September and October of that year, devoted respectively to 'Le Jour' and 'Le Soir' -- clothes for day and for evening.
Fashion editor Bettina Ballard has described how 'That season we took a big daylight studio up five exceptionally long flights of stairs, with no telephone, no water.' They worked under pressure, 'practically with stop watch in hand,' yet the sessions resulted in 'some of the strongest fashion pictures [Penn] ever took' (In my Fashion, Secker & Warburg, 1960, p.219).