Moments Preserved: Eight Essays in Photographs and Words

Artist: Irving Penn 
Author: Irving Penn and Alexander Liberman (intro.)
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Date: 1960 
Condition: From the first edition, lacking dust wrapper (not uncommon it seems as the slipcase is a tight fit) but with the original slipcase, a little shelf-marked but generally very tidy. The edition information on the flyleaf has the copyright symbol blacked out, something often cited as indicating a further printing. The book itself bound in ivory linen, some light tanning to the spine and a little wear to the edges of the spine. Internally very clean and tidy.

Penn's first major publication, this volume was something of a landmark event in the photographic world and with high production values, interesting images throughout and a marked international flavour, you can see why. The eight sections are The Flavour of France, Picasso's Barcelona, Italian Gallery, Moroccan Visit, Faces of England, Christmas in Cuzco, New York Scrapbook and The Small Trades and even though the book is now 65 years old, the echoes of Penn's styling and approach are there in so many of the contemporary features and publications we see in modern magazines and periodicals. 

For the Modern British aficionado, there are definitely echoes of Penn's style in Snowdon's photographs for the 1965 publication Private View, and indeed in the Faces of London section, Penn includes portraits of several British arts figures, including Stanley Spencer, Reg Butler, Kenneth Armitage and Augustus John