Details
IRVING PENN (1917-2009)
Dahomey Children, 1972
platinum-palladium print, printed 1976
signed, initialed, titled, dated, numbered '14/45', 'P 1839', inscribed 'Merry Christmas, with love to Pat, 1978' in pencil and Penn/Condé Nast copyright credit reproduction limitation and edition stamps (on the verso)
19 3/8 x 21¼in. (49.5 x 54.5cm.)
Literature
Penn, Worlds in a Small Room, Grossman, 1974, p. 37; Irving Penn: Collection privée, Musée d'art et d'histoire, Fribourg, 1994, cat. no. 45, p. 68
Further Details
In his caption in Worlds in a Small Room Irving Penn introduces this group of children in the small town of Ganvi and explains: 'The girls wear turbans, the boys go bareheaded. At first this was the only way I could tell them apart. Then I began to notice that some of the girls wore sprinklings of powder on their necks and shoulders, the typical feminine make-up of the region. In a short while I wondered how I could ever have been confused about which was which.' (p. 37)

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