DOROTHEA LANGE | MA BURNHAM, CONROY, ARKANSAS
Lot Closed
October 1, 07:20 PM GMT
Estimate
6,000 - 9,000 USD
Lot Details
Description
DOROTHEA LANGE
1895-1965
MA BURNHAM, CONROY, ARKANSAS
oversized gelatin silver print, with 'No. 157a' and cropping notations in pencil on the image, mounted, framed, an Edwynn Houk Gallery label on the reverse, 1938, printed from the original negative circa 1965 under the direct supervision of the photographer for The Museum of Modern Art
image: 16⅞ by 14⅝ in. (42.9 by 37.4 cm.)
framed: 25 by 21¼ in. (63.5 by 54 cm.)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2003, Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York, as agent
Dorothea Lange and Paul Schuster Taylor, An American Exodus: A Record of Human Erosion (New York, 1939), p. 151
Dorothea Lange Looks at the American Country Woman (Washington, D. C., 1967), cover (tight crop variant) and p. 67
Dorothea Lange: Photographs of a Lifetime (Aperture, 1982), p. 101
Elizabeth Partridge, ed., Dorothea Lange: A Visual Life (Washington, D. C., and London, 1994), p. 77
Therese Thau Heyman, Sandra S. Phillips, and John Szarkowski, Dorothea Lange: American Photographs (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1994), pl. 73
Keith F. Davis, The Photographs of Dorothea Lange (Kansas City, 1995), p. 71
Dorothea Lange: The Human Face (Aosta, 1998), p. 65
Pierre Borhan, Dorothea Lange: The Heart and Mind of a Photographer (Boston, 2002), p. 147
Sarah Hermanson Meister, Dorothea Lange: Words & Pictures (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2019), p. 167 (variant)
'My father was a Confederate soldier. He give his age a year older than what it was to get into the Army. After the War he bought 280 acres from the railroad and cleared it. We never had a mortgage on it. In 1920 the land was sold and the money devided [sic]. Now none of the children own their land. It's all done gone, but it raised a family. I've done my duty - I feel like I have. I've raised 12 children - 6 dead, 6 alive, and 2 orphans. . .' - Ma Burnham, as told to Dorothea Lange, 28 June 1938
The first major Dorothea Lange retrospective was presented at The Museum of Modern Art in 1966. Before her death in October 1965, Lange had worked closely with John Szarkowski, Director of the Department of Photography, to prepare the installation. The photographs were printed to Lange's careful specifications and according to the layout that she and Szarkowski together had designed. The pencil crop marks on the present photograph represent Lange's own cropping decisions. Two sets of photographs were printed in preparation for a never-realized travelling component of the exhibition; the Museum retained one set and the second was deaccessioned.