Irving Penn
Cigarette 37, New York

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

CultureAmerican

Titles

Cigarette 37, New York

Date1972

PlaceNew York City, New York, United States

MediumPlatinum/palladium print

DimensionsImage: 23 3/8 × 17 1/4 in. (59.4 × 43.8 cm)

Credit LineThe Allan Chasanoff Photographic Collection

Object number91.990

Not on view

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Department

Photography

Special Collections

Allan Chasanoff Photographic Collection

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 detritus that pushed the boundaries of the beautiful. In 1972 he produced a series of photographs of cigarette stubs, gathered on the street and brought back to the studio, where he placed them on a white background and photographed them with the same care and elegant dignity that characterized his fashion photographs. Penn had begun to study the historical and then seldom-used platinum printing process in 1964, and the series of cigarette butts was the first that he planned to print exclusively with the expensive metal. The subtle tonal range and lush, velvety surface of his meticulously printed platinum photograph enrich the sooty, charred ends of the wrinkled and dirty stubs, lending a luxurious appeal to the discarded debris that verges on the ironic.
ProvenanceAllan Chasanoff, New York; given to MFAH, 1991.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks

Inscribed on mount, verso, in pencil, and circled in pencil: "C61"

Inscribed on mount, verso, in pencil: "Arches paper on Aluminum / Multiple coating and printing / 1 Platinum / Neg. No. 37 / 2 Platinum-palladium"

Inscribed on mount, verso, in pencil: "Print made Feb-Mar 1975"

Inscribed on mouont, verso, in pencil: "15/70"

Stamped on mount, verso: "Handcoated by the photographer"

Stamped on mount, verso: "Deacidified"

Stamped on mount, verso (with pencil insertions of copyright date): "Photograph by Irving Penn / Copyright © 1974 by Irving Penn"

Stamped on mount, verso: "Not to be reproduced without written permission of the photographer."

Inscribed in pencil, verso of mount: "No more than 70 original prints of this picture will ever be made. IP"

Signed in pencil, verso of mount, and circled: "Irving Penn"

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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