Man with Pink Face, New Guinea

Irving Penn

1970, printed 1993 · Silver dye bleach print · Photographs

Although Penn worked in both color and black and white when traveling the far corners of the globe, he produced almost no color prints of the pictures. That visual experience was left to the printed pages of Vogue, which published them from 1967 to 1971 (see case nearby). Penn made this trial print of a New Guinea man two decades later, by which time doubts about color photography’s capacities as an art form had evaporated. Penn evidently preferred the black-and-white medium, however, and did not make further color trials.

Artist

Irving Penn

Date

1970, printed 1993

Medium

Silver dye bleach print

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation, 2020