Live Auction 14977Photographs Including Property from the Museum of Modern Art
IRVING PENN (1917–2009)
Lot 134

IRVING PENN (1917–2009)

Marcel Duchamp, New York, April 30, 1948

Closed10 October 2017

Price Realised

USD 25,000

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IRVING PENN (1917–2009)
Marcel Duchamp, New York, April 30, 1948
gelatin silver print, printed 1983
signed, titled, dated and numbered '12275' in pencil, stamped photographer's/Vogue copyright credit and edition (verso); credited, titled and dated on affixed exhibition label (frame backing board)
image: 9 1/2 x 7 1/2 in. (24 x 19 cm.)
sheet: 10 x 8 in. (25.5 x 20.4 cm.)
This work is from an edition of twenty-five signed, silver prints.

Acquired from a private collection, 2005.

Specialist note

'Sometime in 1948 I began photographing portraits in a small corner space made of two studio flats pushed together, the floor covered with a piece of old carpeting. A very rich series of pictures resulted […] This confinement, surprisingly, seemed to comfort people, soothing them. The walls were a surface to lean on or push against. For me the picture possibilities were interesting; limiting the subjects' movement seemed to relieve me of part of the problem of holding on to them.'—Irving Penn