Title: Irving Penn Photographic Collection, 1944-1945

ID: RG2/003

Extent: 0.9 Cubic Feet

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Arrangement

Abstract

Creators

Administrative/Biographical History

Irving Penn was born on June 16, 1917, in Plainfield, NJ, to Sonia Greenburg and Harry W. Penn. Penn attended Olney High School in Philadelphia and studied design under Alexey Brodovitch, the art director of Harper’s Bazaar, at the Pennsylvania School of Industrial Art from 1934 to 1938. Originally trained as a painter, Penn began his career as a graphic artist, publishing drawings in Harper’s Bazaar, working as director of advertising design for Saks Fifth Avenue, and traveling to Mexico to paint before becoming the assistant art director for Vogue in 1943.

Penn took a leave of absence from Vogue in August 1944 to volunteer as an ambulance driver for the American Field Service (AFS) during World War II. He was sent overseas with CM 92 in October 1944 and arrived in Naples, Italy, on November 6, 1944. Upon arrival Penn was attached to the 485 Ambulance Company (Coy) and served as a driver and staff photographer in Italy from 1944 to 1945. In July of 1945 he was transferred from Italy to India with unit IB 59-T. After a stay in Secunderabad, India, Penn was repatriated to the United States in November of 1945 after the cessation of war with Japan. Penn was awarded the 1939-45 Star and the Italy Star for his service with AFS during the war.

After the war, Penn returned to Vogue as a staff photographer and was later named one of "The World’s 10 Greatest Photographers" in an international poll conducted by Popular Photography Magazine in 1958. Throughout his long career, Penn photographed in numerous styles ranging from celebrity portraiture and fashion to still life and ethnography. His photographs are housed in major museums in America and throughout the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Portrait Gallery and the National Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C, and the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris.

Penn married the fashion model Lisa Fonssagrives in 1950 and had one son, Tom. Irving Penn died at the age of ninety two on October 7, 2009, in New York City.

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Administrative Information

Restrictions: This collection is open for research. Some photocopies of the original photographs are available, and these are to be used first in place of the originals. For access to the original photographs, permission from the Head Archivist may be needed. Cotton gloves are required for the handling of all photographic material.

Rights: Single photocopies may be made for research purposes. Permission to publish material from the collection must be submitted in writing to the AFS Archives. In the event that this research becomes a source for publication, a credit line indicating the Archives of the American Field Service and AFS Intercultural Programs is required. Researchers are responsible for determining any copyright questions.

Acquisition Note: The photographic prints and negatives in the Irving Penn Photographic Collection were created by Irving Penn while serving as an ambulance driver and staff photographer for the American Field Service in Italy and India-Burma from 1944 to 1945. Penn’s photographic prints and negatives were originally housed with RG2/002, the World War II Photographic Collection of the American Field Service, and were separated at an unknown date by AFS Archives staff as a topical collection.

Related Materials:

For more photographic prints and negatives from the American Field Service (AFS) and other AFS staff photographers during World War II (including photographs of General McCreery’s farewell review for 567 Company in March 1945), see RG2/002, the World War II Photographic Collection. For more prints by Irving Penn (developed from negatives after the war) see RG2/016, the Joseph P. Brinton III Collection.

For collections outside of the Archives of the American Field Service and AFS Intercultural Programs, see the Irving Penn paper archives, 1939-1997 at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Preferred Citation: [Identification of item], [Date]; Irving Penn Photographic Collection; Archives of the American Field Service and AFS Intercultural Programs, New York, NY

Scope and Contents:

The Irving Penn Photographic Collection consists of photographic prints and negatives captured by Penn between 1944 and 1945 during his time as an ambulance driver and staff photographer stationed with CM 92 and IB 59-T of the American Field Service (AFS) in Italy and India-Burma. The photographic prints and negatives in this collection include posed portraiture of AFS drivers in the 485 and 567 Companies (sometimes containing more than one individual), casual photographs of the drivers and their military peers in the British Eighth Army, the transfer of AFS units from Italy to India-Burma in 1945, platoon headquarters, and interactions with local civilians.

Most of the photographic prints were developed from the negatives in this collection, although there are some photographs with no corresponding negative (including photographs of the air evacuations in Italy in Subseries1C.) Similarly, there are some negatives with no corresponding photograph (including several negatives of soldiers from the British Eighth Army in Subseries 2B and images from General McCreery’s review of 485 Company in Subseries 2C.) Most of the photographs in Series 1 were labeled (verso) by Penn or other AFS staff.

Please see the individual series descriptions for additional information.

Detailed Description
Box 1: Series 1: Photographs, 1944-1945
Box 2: Series 2: Negatives, 1944-1945
Box 3: Oversize