id: 147332 accession number: 1973.120 share license status: Copyrighted url: https://clevelandart.org/art/1973.120 updated: 2023-03-11 20:50:59.769000 Allie Mae Burroughs, Wife of a Cotton Sharecropper, Hale County, Alabama, 1936, printed later. Walker Evans (American, 1903–1975). Gelatin silver print; image: 23.7 x 18.4 cm (9 5/16 x 7 1/4 in.); matted: 50.8 x 40.6 cm (20 x 16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Wishing Well Fund 1973.120 © Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art title: Allie Mae Burroughs, Wife of a Cotton Sharecropper, Hale County, Alabama title in original language: series: series in original language: creation date: 1936, printed later creation date earliest: 1936 creation date latest: 1936 current location: 230 Photography creditline: Wishing Well Fund copyright: © Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art --- culture: America, 20th century technique: gelatin silver print department: Photography collection: PH - American 1900-1950 type: Photograph find spot: catalogue raisonne: --- CREATORS * Walker Evans (American, 1903–1975) - artist Walker Evans American, 1903-1975 Greatly admired for his photographs of America during the Great Depression, Walker Evans (born in St. Louis) originally wanted to be a writer. He studied literature and languages at Phillips Academy in Massachusetts, then spent one year at Williams College. In 1926 he traveled to Paris, where he audited courses at the Sorbonne before moving to New York City in 1927. Over the next two years Evans developed a strong interest in photography, taking numerous pictures of New York. The unusual viewpoints and sharp angles of this early work reveal his awareness of contemporary European photography. Also influential was the work of Eugène Atget and Paul Strand, whose strong, direct style Evans admired. In 1931 Evans undertook his first major photographic project in collaboration with Lincoln Kirstein: a series of photographs of New England architecture for a proposed book by architectural historian John Brooks Wheelwright. A selection of these photographs was later exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1933). From 1935 to early 1937, Evans worked for the Resettlement Administration (later known as the Farm Security Administration), documenting the effects of the depression. He spent most of his time traveling through the South, taking photographs in the clear, straightforward manner for which he became famous. His subjects ranged from rural farmers and miners to roadside architecture and main streets. In 1936 Evans took three weeks' leave from the fsa to work with writer James Agee on an illustrated article on tenant farm families for Fortune magazine. This collaborative project later appeared in book form as Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941). In 1938 the Museum of Modern Art organized a major traveling exhibition of Evans's pictures, accompanied by the book American Photographs. Two years later Evans received the first of three fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (1940, 1941, 1959). From 1943-45 he worked as a writer for Time magazine and from 1945-65 was on the staff of Fortune, producing numerous portfolios and photographic essays. Evans then moved to New Haven, Connecticut, to join the faculty of Yale University as professor of photography/graphic design; in 1974 he was named professor emeritus. M.M. --- measurements: Image: 23.7 x 18.4 cm (9 5/16 x 7 1/4 in.); Matted: 50.8 x 40.6 cm (20 x 16 in.) state of the work: edition of the work: support materials: inscriptions: inscription: Written in pencil on recto: "Walker Evans [signed]"; on typed label covering printed label: "831 Photographic Gallery / 831 East Maple Road / Birmingham, Michigan 48011" translation: remark: --- CURRENT EXHIBITIONS title: Year in Review: 1973 opening date: 1974-01-30T05:00:00 Year in Review: 1973. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 30-March 17, 1974). title: Portraiture: The Image of the Individual opening date: 1983-11-22T05:00:00 Portraiture: The Image of the Individual. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 22, 1983-January 22, 1984). title: From Riches to Rags: American Photography in the Depression opening date: 2017-08-13T04:00:00 From Riches to Rags: American Photography in the Depression. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (August 13-December 31, 2017). title: Photographs in Ink opening date: 2022-11-20T05:00:00 Photographs in Ink. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 20, 2022-April 2, 2023). --- LEGACY EXHIBITIONS --- PROVENANCE --- fun fact: digital description: wall description: Walker Evans worked for the government’s Farm Security Administration in the late 1930s. He prioritized his artistic vision over the agency’s prescribed aims, which often sent photographers on assignments with specific scripts and subjects to photograph. Evans’s provocative images confront the viewer with the realities of life at the time, from the defiant face of Allie Mae Burroughs, wife of an impoverished sharecropper and mother of four, to the juxtaposition of a graveyard and steel mill in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. US Camera was among several popular magazines featuring work from documentary photographers. Its aim was to highlight photographers’ creative eye. --- RELATED WORKS --- CITATIONS "The Year in Review for 1973." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 61, no. 2 (1974): 31-78. page number: p. 77, no. 143 url: www.jstor.org/stable/25152513 The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978. page number: Reproduced: p. 259 url: https://archive.org/details/CMAHandbook1978/page/n279 Cleveland Museum of Art, Tom E Hinson. Catalogue of Photography. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1996. page number: Reproduced: P. 149 url: --- IMAGES