Sharecropper's wife, Hale County, Alabama

Alternate TitleKatie Tingle

Artist Walker Evans (American, 1903 - 1975)

DateAugust 1936; printed later

MediumGelatin silver print

DimensionsImage: 7 11/16 × 2 11/16 inches (19.53 × 6.83 cm)
Sheet: 10 × 3 3/4 inches (25.4 × 9.53 cm)

Credit LineGift of Hallmark Cards, Inc.

Object number2005.27.1353

SignedSigned on window mat, recto, lower right, in pencil: "Walker Evans" [photograph no longer housed in original mat].

Inscribednone

MarkingsOn sheet verso, upper left corner, in pencil: "...[illegible, covered with hinging tape] (FSA)"; On sheet verso, lower right, in pencil: "5".

On View

Not on view

Collections

Photography

Terms

DescriptionPortrait of a woman in a heavily soiled and torn dress. Her hair is pulled back away from her face, and she is barefoot.Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Faces: an Exhibition from the Hallmark Photographic Collection. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, September 16 - October 21, 1984, no. 11.

Rotation 4. The Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, August 20, 2008 – January 15, 2009, no cat.

Dignity vs. Despair: Dorothea Lange and the Depression Era Photographers, 1933-1941. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, June 23 – November 26, 2017, no cat.

Gallery Label

Walker Evans is best known for his precise images of the Depression-era South, made with a 8x10-inch large-format camera. His art reflected a new aesthetic neutrality: his vision is at once objective and personal, intense and unsentimental. Through his choice of framing and empathetic viewpoint, Evans represents a sharecropper's wife as a universal symbol of labor, faith, and sustenance. Evans made this photograph while on assignment with writer James Agee to investigate the plight of Southern tenant farmers in Alabama-a project that culminated in their book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941).

Provenance

Purchased by Hallmark Cards, Inc., Kansas City, MO, 1974;
Given by Hallmark Cards, Inc. to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 2005.

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