“Irving Penn: Small Trades” – Portraits of Skilled Workers of Various Professions During the Mid-20th Century

In 1950–51, inspired by old prints of street criers, photographer Irving Penn began a series of photographs depicting representatives of the ‘small trades’ in Paris, London, and New York. The project began in Paris, where he was assisted in the selection of subjects by French Vogue editor Edmonde Charles-Roux and photographer Robert Doisneau.

Called Small Trades, the pictures captured tradespeople of all kinds—street cleaners and headwaiters, ballet dancers and hot dog vendors, basketball players and lorry washers; all photographed with the tools of their trade and exhibiting visible pride in their work. Penn knew that many of these trades would eventually disappear, and the images created an indelible portrait of work in the mid-20th century.

To create the portraits, Penn’s assistants found the subjects and asked them to come to his studio exactly as they were, wearing their work clothes and carrying the tools of their occupations. The workers were posed against a canvas backdrop and shot with natural light. Penn revisited the series over the following two decades, fine-tuning the images in platinum prints that capture a range of painterly tones.

Penn’s reflections on the tradespeople:

“In general, the Parisians doubted that we were doing exactly what we said we were doing. They felt there was something fishy going on, but they came to the studio more or less as directed— for the fee involved. But the Londoners were quite different from the French. It seemed to them the most logical thing in the world to be recorded in their work clothes. They arrived at the studio, always on time, and presented themselves to the camera with a seriousness and pride that was quite endearing. Of the three, the Americans as a group were the least predictable. In spite of our cautions, a few arrived for their sittings having shed their work clothes, shaved, even wearing dark Sunday suits, sure this was their first step on the way to Hollywood.”

Irving Penn (1917–2009) was one of the most prolific, beloved, and influential artists to emerge after World War II. Known as the premier photographer for Vogue, he revolutionized the look of fashion photography and worked for half a century with the era’s most stunning women, including Lisa Fonssagrives (his wife), Jean Patchett, Carmen Dell’Orefice, and Marisa Berenson. Penn was also a brilliant portraitist. He photographed Truman Capote at age twenty-four, the elder Picasso, and nine-year-old cello prodigy Yo-Yo Ma. And he traveled to rural areas in five continents producing searing portraits of mountain children in Peru and Asaro Mud Men in New Guinea, among many other subjects.