Carson McCullers, New York
Irving Penn American
Not on view
When McCullers sat for Penn in 1950, her play The Member of the Wedding was collecting awards on Broadway. Countering the tilt of her head with the crook of her hand, Penn created a visually unstable pose that artfully telegraphs McCullers’s partial paralysis. This pose and the intensity of her gaze convey a deep humanity rocked by vexing vulnera-bility, qualities manifest in the writer’s sympathy for isolated and eccentric characters.
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