Live Auction 17600Photographs
WALKER EVANS (1903–1975)
Lot 121

WALKER EVANS (1903–1975)

Alabama cotton tenant farmer family (Fields family), 1936

Closed2 October 2019

Price Realised

USD 81,250

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WALKER EVANS (1903–1975)
Alabama cotton tenant farmer family (Fields family), 1936
gelatin silver print, mounted on board
credited, titled and dated on affixed Museum of Modern Art label, stamped with Museum of Modern Art collection stamp (mount, verso)
image/sheet: 7 1/4 x 9 1/4 in. (18.5 x 23.4 cm.)
mount: 16 1/4 x 14 in. (41.2 x 35.5 cm.)

Acquired directly from the artist by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1956;
Photographs from the Museum of Modern Art, Sotheby's, New York, October 22, 2002, lot 62;
acquired from the above sale by the present owner.

Specialist note

In the summer of 1936, Walker Evans traveled to the South with friend and writer James Agee on assignment for Fortune magazine for a piece on tenant farmers. While the article was never published in the magazine, the lengthy text and photographs were published five years later as Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Focusing on three families in Alabama, Agee’s text and Evans' photographs came to represent the entire tragedy of the Great Depression in the eyes of many.

This exquisite mounted print of Bud Fields and his family was acquired directly from the artist by the Museum of Modern Art, New York.