Penn, in his passion to record the human condition, has travelled the world, has photographed with an obsessive fervor the guises in which men live out their lives.
Alexander Liberman
IRVING PENN (1917-2009)
Three Asaro Mudmen, New Guinea, 1970
Details
IRVING PENN (1917-2009)
Three Asaro Mudmen, New Guinea, 1970
gelatin silver print, printed 1984
signed, initialed, titled, dated, numbered '12834' in ink, inscribed 'Merry Christmas for Pat with love' in pencil, Penn/Condé Nast copyright credit reproduction limitation and edition stamps (on the reverse of the mount); one of an edition of 25
19 x 19in. (48.8 x 48.8cm.)
Three Asaro Mudmen, New Guinea, 1970
gelatin silver print, printed 1984
signed, initialed, titled, dated, numbered '12834' in ink, inscribed 'Merry Christmas for Pat with love' in pencil, Penn/Condé Nast copyright credit reproduction limitation and edition stamps (on the reverse of the mount); one of an edition of 25
19 x 19in. (48.8 x 48.8cm.)
Literature
Penn, Worlds in a Small Room, Grossman, 1974, p. 65; Irving Penn photographs in platinum metals - images 1947-1975, Marlborough Fine Art Ltd, 1977, cat. no. 114; Szarkowski, Irving Penn, The Museum of Modern Art, 1984, pl. 108; Penn, Passage: A Work Record, Alfred A. Knopf Callaway, 1991, p. 193; Westerbeck, ed., Irving Penn: A Career in Photography, Art Institute of Chicago Little, Brown and Co., 1997, pl. 31, cat. no. 109, p. 80; Greenough, Irving Penn: Platinum Prints, National Gallery of Art Yale University Press, 2005, pl. 55
Further Details
'Makehuku men from the village of Mandow near Goroka, known generally as the mud men of Asaro. They wear grey mud masks sculptured over cane frames; the masks recall a battle in which their remote ancestors, driven into a river by an enemy tribe, emerged mud-covered. Their attackers, thinking them evil spirits, turned and ran.'
Irving Penn (Worlds in a Small Room, p. 64)
Irving Penn (Worlds in a Small Room, p. 64)
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