Irving Penn (1917-2009) was among the most esteemed and influential photographers of the twentieth century. Over the course of a nearly seventy-year career, he mastered a pared-down aesthetic of studio photography that is distinguished for its meticulous attention to composition, nuance, and detail. This indispensable book features one of the largest selections of Penn's photographers ever compiled–nearly 300 in all–including famous and beloved images as well as works that have never been published. Celebrating the centennial of Penn's birth, this lavish volume spans the entirety of his groundbreaking career. An enlightening introduction situates his work in the context of the various artistic, social, and political environments and events that affected the content of his photographs. Lively essays acquaint readers with Penn's primary subjects and campaigns, including early documentary scenes and imagery; portraits of cultural figures and celebrities; fashion; female nudes; peoples of Peru, Dahomey (Benin), New Guinea, and Morocco; and still lifes. Rounding out the book are discussions of Penn's advertising pictures and his painstaking printing processes, as well as an illustrated chronology. Irving Penn: Centennialis essential for any fan of this artist's work or of the history of twentieth-century photography.

"The 253 works in the exhibition, many of them rare or unique and all of exceptional print quality, have been culled from the more than five thousand that comprise the legendary but seldom exhibited Gilman Paper Company Collection, the most important private collection of photographs in the world.

The photographs in this book span photography's first century, 1839-1939.

A broad historical study of the provocative innovations of European and American photography between the World Wars. Presents more than 160 images from the Ford Motor Company Collection of photographs.

Mia Fineman is Chester Dale Fellow in the Department of Photographs, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

OBJECT:PHOTO shifts the dialogue about modernist photography from an emphasis on the subject and the image to the actual photographic object, created by a certain artist at a particular time and present today in its unique physicality. This shift is especially significant for a study of the period during which photography developed a distinctive formal language. A growing awareness of the rarity of images made between the two world wars has altered historians' considerations, encouraging new approaches privileging the originality of each work and the density of references each contains. This richly illustrated publication culminates a four-year collaborative research endeavor between The Museum of Modern Art's Departments of Photography and Conservation, and nearly 30 visiting scholars, on the material and aesthetic evolution of avant-garde photography in the early twentieth century. The 341 modernist photographs known as The Thomas Walther Collection, a major museum acquisition made in 2001, is presented in its entirety, establishing a new standard of depth for the medium. Essays by curators, researchers, and conservators consider the history of collecting from this era to the present and how deepening knowledge has shifted the perspective on the medium; the material facts of the Walther pictures as a baseline for understanding the development of photographic materials in this era; and how the intellectual formation of the writers of critical photographic publications of the era and the societal and cultural pressures of that historical moment inflected the photography's sense of its own history. Together with thematic, object-based case studies of groups of pictures that demonstrate new approaches in specific, divergent examples, these contributions reanimate the dialogue on this formative era in photography.

A backward glance at documentary / Beaumont NewhallThe photographer as aggressor / Bill JayAtget, precursor of modern documentary photography / Maria Morris HambourgPhotographic facts and Thirties America / Anne Wilkes TuckerWalker Evans' America : a documentary invention / Alan TrachtenbergA way of seeing and the act of touching : Helen Levitt's photographs of the Forties / Max KozloffPublic statements/private views : shifting the ground in the 1950s / William S. JohnsonThe photographs of Larry Burrows, human qualities in a document / Mark JohnstonePropaganda and persuasion / Estelle Jussim.

Published to accompany an exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, from February 1998, this is a study of the achievements of the early career of the American photographer, Paul Strand (1890-1976). After studying photography in New York with the social reformer Lewis Hine, Strand began to absorb the ideas of the European avant-garde, and fellow-photographer and art entrepreneur Alfred Stieglitz heralded Strand's pictures as the first images of an incisive modern vision.

"The Work of Atget: The Art of Old Paris will be published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same title, on view in the West Wing Galleries of The Museum of Modern Art from October 14, 1982 through January 4, 1983. The book is the second of four exploring the art of the French photographer Eugene Atget. Support for The Work of Atget volumes has been generously provided by Springs Industries, Inc. During his lifetime, Atget was best known as a photographer of Old Paris, the subject of this volume. To create his portrait of Paris as it had appeared prior to the French Revolution, he photographed not only the famous sites and monuments--Notre Dame, the Pantheon, and the Luxembourg Palace--but also the little-noticed corners and artifacts that had escaped the urban renewal projects of the 19th century--the quiet courtyards, private town houses, and unexpected passageways. Perhaps no more intimate portrait of Old Paris exists than the one Atget painstakingly fashioned." "A biography of Atget by Mrs. Hambourg forms the text of the 192-page The Art of Old Paris. Drawing on new research, Mrs. Hambourg reveals more fully the life of this hitherto elusive and shadowy artist and offers new insights into his intellectual pursuits and his political and artistic associations. The 117 photographs in the exhibition are reproduced as full-page plates, printed in three color offset to insure the utmost fidelity to the original prints. The plates are fully annotated and accompanied by 95 reference illustrations."--Excerpt from the MoMA press release No. 31 (see link to PDF).