Through May 12 at the Art Institute of Chicago is the full thirty-six pieces of Irving Penn's Underfoot series.  From the museum's website:

The path that led Irving Penn to the seemingly galactic abstractions of his late series Underfoot lay just outside his studio door. Walking the streets of Manhattan with a portable stool and a camera fitted with several extension tubes, Penn lowered his eye and his equipment nearly to the pavement. There he found a universe of abject form: pebbled concrete, cheap discarded matches and cigarette butts, and above all a wealth of masticated gum. Capturing patches of this blobby urban landscape at close range, Penn transformed it with characteristic precision into a world of odd beauty, complete unto itself and unplaceably remote.

Better known, at least by me, for his fashion photography and portraits, Penn recognized and proclaimed in black and white what I am attempting in color. Penn also warned, "I think that black and white pictures are intrinsically finer than colour. I think that I have never seen a really great colour photograph."

(In April 2008 the Picasso portrait above sold at Christie's for $133,000.)

Underfoot is the antithesis of Penn's very own thesis.  In a generally unenthusiastic 2004 New York Times review, Benjamin Genocchio wrote, "Penn, who is 87, photographed gnarly blobs and patches of discarded chewing gum on the streets of New York City through 1999. Photographed up close and then outputted as enlarged black-and-white prints, without touchups, as far as I can tell, they reveal strange, fascinating organic forms of multiple shapes, sizes and variations."

For me they also reveal and revel in a parallel reality, another sort of beauty.

IRVING PENN, "Underfoot XXIV", New York

Gelatin silver print, edition of 5

49.1 x 48.7 cm (image); 52.3 x 49.6 cm (paper)

IRVING PENN, "Underfoot XXXIII", New York

Gelatin silver print, edition of 5

49.1 x 48.7 cm (image); 52.3 x 49.6 cm (paper)

IRVING PENN, "Underfoot XXXVI", New York,

Gelatin silver print, edition of 5

49.1 x 48.7 cm (image); 52.3 x 49.6 cm (paper)