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Lot 83
Irving Penn(1917-2009)'Vogue' Photographers, Oyster Bay, Long Island
1 – 10 October 2025, 12:00 EDT
Online, New YorkSold for US$5,376 inc. premium
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Irving Penn (1917-2009)
'Vogue' Photographers, Oyster Bay, Long Island, 1946
Gelatin silver print; mounted to Strathmore board, the photographer's credit stamp, a Condé Nast copyright stamp, and a typed label, with title and date, on the reverse, framed.
7 1/2 x 9 3/8 in. (19.1 x 23.1 cm.)
mount 15 x 11 in. (38.1 x 27.9 cm.)
Gelatin silver print; mounted to Strathmore board, the photographer's credit stamp, a Condé Nast copyright stamp, and a typed label, with title and date, on the reverse, framed.
7 1/2 x 9 3/8 in. (19.1 x 23.1 cm.)
mount 15 x 11 in. (38.1 x 27.9 cm.)
Footnotes
Provenance
Estate of Louis J. Gartner Jr. (1925-2011), the photographer's first studio manager
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2011
Literature
Valentine Lawford, Horst: His Work and His World (New York, 1984), p. 249
David Bailey and Martin Harrison, Shots of Style: Great Fashion Photographs (London: Victoria & Albert Museum, 1985), p. 41
Irving Penn：Printemps des Arts de Monte Carlo (Sporting D'hiver de Monte-Carlo, 1986), pl. 1
Irving Penn, Passage: A Work Record (New York, 1991), p. 21
Note
In this enigmatic group portrait taken at Horst P. Horst's bucolic Oyster Bay estate on Long Island, Irving Penn portrays eight of Vogue magazine's leading photographers—figures who shaped the visual identity of postwar fashion and editorial photography. The sitters include (from left to right) Serge Balkin, Sir Cecil Beaton, George Platt Lynes, Constantin Joffé, Horst, John Rawlings, Penn (holding the camera shutter release), and Erwin Blumenfeld. At the center of the composition the model Dorian Leigh poses with a large-format camera, a quiet nod to the collaborative dynamic between photographer and subject.
Taken during the first decade of Penn's long and influential career at Vogue, this portrait stands as both a document of a particular artistic community and a meditation on creative voice. The group is presented as a cohort of distinctive identities unified by a shared visual mission. The gentle wilderness of the setting sharply contrasts with their typical work environment at a photo studio or set.
Vogue Photographers anticipates Penn's later series of group portraits depicting employees from various professions, shot with similar visual rigor. In placing his fellow photographers in this context, Penn subtly elevates their status from commercial contributors to cultural artisans, documenting them with the same respect and clarity he would bring to workers across other fields. The image remains a rare and intimate window into the creative engine behind one of the most influential magazines of the twentieth century.
A print of this image is in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. (NPG.88.70.57).