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Penny Picture Display, Savannah

A work made of gelatin silver print.
CC0 Public Domain Designation

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  • A work made of gelatin silver print.

Date:

1936, printed c. 1962

Artist:

Walker Evans
American, 1903–1975

About this artwork

Walker Evans was remarkably adept at straddling the cultural divide between documentary photography and the museum. One of several photographers hired by the Farm Security Administration to document the Depression, Evans made some of his most famous images in the summer of 1936: pictures of impoverished families in Hale County, Alabama, later published in his book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Just two years later, he was honored with a one-person show at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, which had only recently embraced photography as an art form. This image of the many portraits in a photographer’s studio—an homage to the workaday photographer and the faces of ordinary Americans—became, in the context of a museum exhibition, a statement about the art and meaning of photography.

Status

Currently Off View

Department

Photography and Media

Artist

Walker Evans

Title

Penny Picture Display, Savannah

Place

United States (Artist's nationality:)

Date  Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

Made 1936

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Inscriptions

No markings recto or verso

Dimensions

Image/paper/first mount: 21.7 × 17.7 cm (8 9/16 × 7 in.); Second mount: 45.7 × 35.3 cm (18 × 13 15/16 in.)

Credit Line

Purchased with funds provided by Mrs. James Ward Thorne

Reference Number

1962.148

IIIF Manifest  The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.

https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/88584/manifest.json

Extended information about this artwork

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.

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