Lot 121
121
WALKER EVANS (1903–1975)
WALKER EVANS (1903–1975)
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WALKER EVANS (1903–1975)

Alabama cotton tenant farmer family (Fields family), 1936

Details
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.)
Provenance
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.
Literature
Exhibition catalogue, Walker Evans, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1971, p. 79.
Jerald C. Maddox, Walker Evans: Photographs for the Farm Security Administration, 1935-1938, Da Capo Press, New York, 1975, p. 327 and cover.
Jerry L. Thompson, Walker Evans at Work, Thames and Hudson, London, 1984, p. 133.
Gilles Mora and John T. Hill, Walker Evans: The Hungry Eye, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York, 1993, pl. 50, p. 177.
Belinda Rathbone, Walker Evans: A Biography, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1995, n.p.
Exhibition catalogue, Walker Evans, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2000, pl. 103 (this print).
Exhibited
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Walker Evans, June–September 2000, and thereafter to San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 2000–2001.

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Shlomi Rabi
Shlomi Rabi
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Lot Essay

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.

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