Museum Home Past Exhibitions Irving Penn: Small Trades

September 9, 2009–January 10, 2010 at the Getty Center

ExhibitionEventsPublications

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Lectures

Working Class: Irving Penn's Small Trades Series in Context
In order to come to terms with his success as a fashion photographer, Penn needed to photograph other kinds of subjects as well. Colin Westerbeck, director of the California Museum of Photography at UC Riverside, explains how these 1950s studies of working-class people in their work clothes were a seminal project for the photographer in the context of his full career.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009, 7:00 p.m.
Getty Center, Harold M. Williams Auditorium
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Art and Craft: An Old, Unhappy Marriage
Since the Renaissance, artists have sought to distinguish themselves from craftsmen in order to mark their own creativity. It is impossible, however, to divorce art from craft, and expression from technique. Richard Sennett, professor of sociology at New York University and the London School of Economics, examines the modern and contemporary artists who want to renew and refresh this marriage in the photographs in the exhibitions Irving Penn: Small Trades and In Focus: The Worker (opens November 3, 2009).

Thursday, December 3, 2009, 7:00 p.m.
Getty Center, Harold M. Williams Auditorium
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Gallery Course

Irving Penn's Small Trades
Join Virginia Heckert, associate curator of Photographs and co-curator of the exhibition, in a guided-tour of Irving Penn: Small Trades followed by a viewing of related photographs of workers by John Thomson, Eugene Atget, August Sander, Milton Rogovin, and Bill Owens in the Department of Photographs Study Room. Open to 25 students. Course fee $15.

Saturday, October 24, 2009, 10:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m.
Getty Center, Museum galleries and Department of Photographs Study Room
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GettyGuide™ Audio Player

Hear Getty curators and other experts discuss the working methods and personal philosophies behind Penn's work, and explore how these take shape in the prints themselves. Pick up an audio player in the Museum Entrance Hall.


Commis--Larue, Paris / Penn
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Talks

Curator's Gallery Talks
Virginia Heckert, associate curator of Photographs, leads a gallery talk on the exhibition. Meet under the stairs in the Museum Entrance Hall.

Thursdays, October 1 and 29, 2009, 1:30 p.m.
Getty Center, Museum galleries


Anne Lacoste, assistant curator of Photographs, leads a gallery talk on the exhibition. Meet under the stairs in the Museum Entrance Hall.

Wednesdays, November 18 and December 2, 2009, 1:30 p.m.
Getty Center, Museum galleries


Film Series

Four Angry Young Men Film Series
Like Irving Penn's photographs of dignified workers, a movement in the 1950s called the British New Wave gave the common person visibility. These films popularized the ideas of "angry young men," developed by British authors such as John Osborne whose works championed the lower classes and critiqued the wealthy. The films are gritty and beautiful as were their blazing new stars: Albert Finney, Richard Harris, Tom Courtenay, and Richard Burton.

Look Back in Anger (1959, Great Britain, not rated)
Saturday, November 14, 2009, 4:00 p.m.


Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1961, Great Britain, not rated)
Saturday, November 14, 2009, 7:30 p.m.


This Sporting Life (1963, Great Britain, not rated)
Saturday, November 21, 2009, 4:00 p.m.


The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962, Great Britain, not rated)
Saturday, November 21, 2009, 7:30 p.m.


Getty Center, Harold M. Williams Auditorium