Girl at Gee's Bend, Alabama
Sheet: 10 7/8 × 13 15/16 inches (27.62 × 35.4 cm)
- L10
Masters of 20th-Century Photography from the Hallmark Collection. Waterloo Municipal Galleries, Waterloo, IA, May 2 -June 13, 1982, no cat.
New Acquisitions to the Hallmark Photographic Collection, 1980-1983. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, April 1 – May 1, 1983.
Faces: An Exhibition from the Hallmark Photographic Collection. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 16 September 16 – October 21, 1984, no. 15 cat.
Selections from the Hallmark Photographic Collection. Highland Community College, Highland, KS, October 19 - November 11, 1993, 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.
In this photograph, a young girl gazes out the small window of a log cabin in Gee’s Bend, Alabama. This small, African American community, now celebrated for its multi-generational quiltmakers, was home to tenant farmers and sharecroppers who tended the same land as their enslaved ancestors.
During the Great Depression, Arthur Rothstein worked as a photographer for the Farm Security Administration (FSA), a government agency created to bring awareness to rural poverty. He traveled to communities in Alabama to visually document the need for government assistance programs. Scenes like this one furthered the FSA’s work while also creating a historical archive of American culture.
