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Alabama Cotton Tenant Farmer's Wife

Black and white photograph of women, lips pursed, against wood paneled wall.

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  • Black and white photograph of women, lips pursed, against wood paneled wall.

Date:

1936, printed c. 1962

Artist:

Walker Evans
American, 1903–1975

About this artwork

“Unrelieved, bare-faced, revelatory fact,” read the monograph that accompanied Walker Evans’s photographs when many of them were displayed at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1938. Taken during the preceding two years, while he traveled throughout the South for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) under the direction of Roy Stryker, these images document the plight of the rural poor during the Depression. With clinical precision and a fastidious reserve, Evans photographed main streets, storefronts, hand-painted signs, gas stations, abandoned buildings, and automobiles. He took pictures of tenant farmers’ homes—their kitchens, beds, bureau drawers, and fireplaces—with and without their occupants. Taken for Fortune magazine while Evans, on leave from the FSA, was traveling with the writer James Agee, this famous photograph shows a tenant farmer’s wife standing outside her house. With patient dignity, she looks straight at the viewer, a shy half-smile on her lips. This work is part of a remarkable collaboration with Agee published in the book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941). As one of the nation’s finest documentary photographers, Evans continued this exacting and lucid description of American culture throughout his career.

Status

Currently Off View

Department

Photography and Media

Artist

Walker Evans

Title

Alabama Cotton Tenant Farmer's Wife

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: 21 × 17 cm (8 5/16 × 6 3/4 in.); Mount: 45.7 × 35.6 cm (18 × 14 1/16 in.)

Credit Line

Purchased with funds provided by Mrs. James Ward Thorne

Reference Number

1962.158

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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