The series of images of the dancer Alexandra Beller, simply entitled ‘Dancer’, was Irving Penn’s final major artistically cohesive project. The result is a series of photographs, all different, some expressed with greater precision and power and others softer and more poetic. His personal engagement is clearly evident. The image in our auction is expressively vibrant and exciting. In it Penn succeeds in capturing the fluidity of Alexandra’s movements while the focus is on her feet.
The image is considered a highlight of the ‘Dancer’ series. The photographs vary in size; the picture in the auction is one of the larger images. In 2001 the entire suite of Penn’s photographs was published together in the book, Dancer.
The historical context and the story behind the work are two elements that play a significant role in understanding the importance of a specific work of art. In this case we know precisely what these are. The ‘Dancer’ series marks the end of Penn’s great life as an artist. In the book of the same name, the subject of the photograph, Alexandra Beller, describes her meeting with Penn and what it felt like to stand in front of his camera: “Having never modeled nude before, my first session with Mr. Penn was an anxious and uncomfortable event. Penn’s gaze made this both more and less relaxing. His respect, his integrity, his incredible calm was, of course, sources of relief to me; his intensity of focus, however, was like an X-ray, so any comfort gained by my superficial body evaporated quickly in the soul-searching depth of his eyes. His eyes were like no other that I have seen; keen does not begin to cover it. But after the first session, we scheduled another, and then another and another and eventually, without premeditation, the collection was born. […] Having trained my body for so long to sense both the past and the present through the skeleton, the muscles, the organs, the skin, his directions were like lasers, carving out evocative emotional pictures from the neutral self. We stayed neutral, socially, with each other, preferring to find this near–silent dialogue, this almost psychic connection of shape, thought, character and feeling. It remains the quietest, and one of the richest, collaborations, I’ve experienced.”