Penn, Irving:. Moments Preserved. Eight essays in photographs and words by Irving Penn

New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960. Oversized large in original cloth with dustjacket in the original slipcase. 182 pp. Richly illustrated throughout. Slipcase worn. The dustjacket is present but very worn. Book itself very good condition and overall a very good copy

First edition of Moments Preserved. It was Irving Penn’s first book and printed in gravure in Switzerland by C. J. Bucher and simultaneously published in four languages. This volume brings together Irving Penn’s best works in fashion, portraiture, travel and still life photography. Introduction by Alexander Liberman. Roth. The Book of 101 Books. p.158; Hasselblad. The Open Book. p.186; Auer. 802 Photo Books. p.401].

Please note: Heavy item that may require extra shipping charges

“Irving Penn’s first book, Montents Preserved, is an overview of an astonishingly busy career &mdash”; one that began in earnest when he was hired by Alexander Liberman in 1943 to be the art director’s assistant at Vogue. Penn had studied briefly with Alexey Brodovitch, but it was Liberman who molded and promoted his work and made him Vogue’s ruling artistic presence;” he also provides a generous introduction here. The book’s uncredited designer is Penn himself (“That’s part of the whole process,” he says), but his crisp pacing, graphic precision, and vivid use of color could easily be mistaken for Liberman at his most lucid. Penn spent a month in Lucerne, Switzerland, overseeing the printers at C. J. Bucher, who had produced Avedon’s Observations the previous year. For Moments Preserved, they worked with gravure, letterpress, and offset processes on separate paper stocks and had casts of Condé”;” Nast’s original engraving plates flown in from New York for the book’s color reproductions. When the first gravures didn’t have the requisite depth, those pages went back to press and another image layer was laid on top of the originals.” (Roth)