Irving Penn
Many-Skirted Indian Woman (B)

Image Not Available

ExpandFavorite

Artist Irving Penn (American, 1917–2009)American, 1917–2009

CultureAmerican

Titles

Many-Skirted Indian Woman (B)

Date1948

Place depictedCuzco, Peru

MediumGelatin silver print

DimensionsImage: 10 3/4 × 9 1/4 in. (27.3 × 23.5 cm)
Sheet: 10 3/4 × 9 1/2 in. (27.3 × 24.1 cm)
Mount: 15 × 11 in. (38.1 × 27.9 cm)

Credit LineGift of The Irving Penn Foundation, donated in gratitude for Anne Wilkes Tucker’s many years of support and friendship

Object number2015.216

Not on view

Explore Further

Department

Photography

Object Type

PHOTOGRAPHS

DescriptionIrving Penn earned a place in the photography canon as one of the best portrait and fashion photographers of the 20th century, but throughout his life he made series of work separate from his commercial career, including still-life studies of trash and debris and nontraditionally beautiful female nudes. After working on assignment for Vogue in Lima, Penn rented an antiquated photographer’s studio in Cuzco to make a number of portraits of indigenous Peruvian subjects with the same elegant dignity that characterized his fashion photographs, rather than the more distanced style typical of ethnographic photographs at the time.
ProvenanceThe Irving Penn Foundation, New York; given to MFAH, 2015.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks

Signed, titled, dated, and annotated verso with stamps and ink

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

If you have questions about this work of art or the MFAH Online Collection please contact us.