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IN THE SUMMER of 1950, in Paris, the most unlikely party in town was happening in a walk-up on the rue de Vaugirard. After lumbering up six flights of stairs, you’d reach a former photography school, without water and electricity, but no matter. There stood the world’s great models, artists and intellectuals alongside mailmen, pastry chefs and vegetable sellers. The host was photographer Irving Penn, then in Paris to document the full spectrum of the “human comedy,” as one of his mentors, art director Alexander Liberman, put…