Dorothea Lange - Photographs New York Tuesday, April 1, 2014 | Phillips

Photographs

New York Auction 1 April 10am & 2pm

  • Provenance

    Bruce Silverstein Gallery,
    New York

  • Literature

    Aperture, Dorothea Lange: Photographs of a Lifetime, cover and p. 122
    Borhan, Dorothea Lange: The Heart and Mind of a Photographer, p. 135
    Davis, The Photographs of Dorothea Lange, p. 55
    Partridge, Dorothea Lange: A Visual Life, pl. 5.14
    Rosenblum, A History of Women Photographers, pl. 165
    San Francisco Museum of Modern Art/ Chronicle Books, Dorothea Lange: American Photographer, pl. 32

  • Catalogue Essay


    As one of the greatest photographers of pre-War America, Dorothea Lange’s images of the Great Depression have been widely lauded as exceptionally humane. Along with Walker Evans, Marion Post Wolcott and Arthur Rothstein, among others, Lange was tasked with depicting the plight of rural America. In 1940, shortly after her tenure at the Farm Security Administration, Lange was appointed Head Photographer for the Bureau of Agricultural Economics, a year-long stint during which she traveled across California and Arizona, as seen in the current lot. Coinciding with the rise in print publications, the photographs were meant to bring to the collective American consciousness such individuals as migrant workers, sharecroppers, farmers and field laborers, whose hardship was largely unknown to the American public. Lange’s portraits, such as the current lot, became emblematic of a larger epidemic. The picker exposes the palm of his hand to the camera, exposing endless grooves that are undoubtedly the result of heavy manual labor. Like many of Lange’s most poignant works, Migratory Cotton Picker, Eloy, Arizona, is not a portrait of an individual, but of an era.

47

Dorothea Lange

Migratory Cotton Worker, Eloy, Arizona

1940
Gelatin silver print, presumably printed 1950s.
10 3/8 x 13 1/4 in. (26.4 x 33.7 cm)
'1163 Euclid Avenue' credit stamp on the verso.

Estimate
$30,000 - 50,000 

Sold for $37,500

Contact Specialist
Vanessa Kramer Hallett
Worldwide Head, Photographs
vhallett@phillips.com

Shlomi Rabi
Head of Sale, New York
srabi@phillips.com

General Enquiries:
+1 212 940 1245

Photographs

New York Auction 1 April 10am & 2pm