Rag and Bone Man, London 1950

Irving Penn made this photograph, Rag and Bone Man, London, with platinum and palladium, printed on paper. The tones here are so gentle, soft, a bit smudgy, like charcoal almost. It’s not hard edged, this thing, and it's not pretending to be. The man is hauling this huge bag over his shoulder, and a pile of rope in his left hand. The surface of the print is smooth, but the tonal range gives it a feeling of texture, that soft grayness. If you look closely at the background, you can see a kind of hazy, atmospheric effect, that almost looks like a painting, or something brushed onto the paper. The mood in this picture is so beautiful: melancholy, but also strangely uplifting. Penn made a lot of portraits; he’s a bit like August Sander in that way, collecting archetypes, showing the world, bit by bit. I always think of art as being a kind of conversation, and this feels like part of that too. It's not about answers, but about making pictures that let us keep asking questions.