July 8-14, 2004

artpicks

Trodden Underfoot

by John Vettese

art

For all the accolades he's received in over 60 years of offbeat fashion photography and portraiture, revered New York artist Irving Penn holds an inexplicable fascination with stuff he finds on the ground. As early as the 1970s, Penn could be seen creating studio still lifes out of discarded, dampened and decaying cigarette butts, an idea expanded over the ensuing decades. His gritty 1999 color image Street Findings gathers clumps of hair, ticket stubs and dirt along with the smokes into an oddly striking image. A project begun around the same time as Findings, the new "Underfoot" series opening at the Art Museum this week tightens Penn's focus onto another mainstay of NYC streets: discarded chewing gum. Shot with warming black and white film in their natural concrete environment, some wads are positioned in the wide scope of greater surroundings, bringing in matches and litter as a nod to his earlier sidewalk work. More fascinating, though, are the tighter close-ups. The folds in one ovular piece resemble those of a brain, while another contorted piece looks purely placental. Many are found smashed to the ground, and Penn shows a knack for finding gum with the correct gathering of dirt and grime to make it resemble a face. Ultimately, this different kind of street photography extracts humanistic qualities from things humans spit out of their mouths on the way to catch the subway.

"Underfoot: Photographs By Irving Penn," July 10-Nov. 28, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 26th St. and the Parkway, 215-763-8100.