“The modern photographer…brings equal interest and devotion to the problem of photographing a queen, a chair, a fashion model, a soldier, a horse. He finds something of himself in everything, and something of everything in himself.”
—Irving Penn
Invoking and updating the centuries-old printmaking tradition known as small trades, street cries, or petits métiers, Irving Penn’s Small Trades series highlights photography’s unique ability to serve as a lens of social and cultural study. In this extensive body of work from the 1950s, Penn invited trades workers into the neutral setting of his studio – paying them a small fee – and captured them with all the accessories of their trade. In Charbonnier, Paris Penn photographed a coal delivery man wearing his backing hat, or coalman hat, which protected his back and shoulders from coal dust as he hauled coal door to door.
In 2008, Penn spoke with the deepest respect and empathy for the daily lives of working men and women, describing his Small Trades photographs as “residual images of enchantment.” Today, Charbonnier exists as a record of a bygone trade and a testament to Penn’s artistry as a social documentarian and brilliant portraitist. This work was purchased in 1980 from Marlborough Gallery at one of the earliest gallery showings of Penn’s Small Trades series.
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