Dorothea Lange - Passion & Humanity: The Susie Tompkins Buell Collection New York Thursday, April 4, 2019 | Phillips
  • Provenance

    Gift from the photographer to her son and daughter-in-law
    Edwynn Houk Gallery, Chicago, 1990
    Page Imageworks, San Francisco, as agent

  • Exhibited

    Dorothea Lange: American Photographs, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 19 May - 4 September 1994; and traveling to Milwaukee Art Museum; International Center of Photography, New York; Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; and Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, through November 1995
    The American Century: Art and Culture 1900-2000, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 23 April - 22 August 1999
    Collected, Pier 24 Photography, San Francisco, 2 May 2016 - 31 January 2017

  • Literature

    Pier 24 Photography, Collected, p. 109 (this print)
    Szarkowski, Phillips, and Heyman, Dorothea Lange: American Photographs, pl. 6, variant
    Davis, The Photographs of Dorothea Lange, p. 35, variant

  • Catalogue Essay

    As recounted by Susie Tompkins Buell in the interview that prefaces this catalogue, Dorothea Lange’s A Sign of the Times—Mended Stockings was the first photograph she acquired. Ms. Buell says of this image: ‘That photograph never ceases to amaze me. It represents something I believe in deeply: a woman holding it together with dignity during the harshest times. It is so poignant to see how Lange recognized the power of that image; it will be a lesson for centuries to come.’

7

A Sign of the Times–Mended Stockings, Stenographer, San Francisco

1934
Gelatin silver print.
9 1/4 x 6 5/8 in. (23.5 x 16.8 cm)
The ‘1163 Euclid Avenue, Berkeley, California, Telephone Landscape-4 3880’ credit stamp and notations in unidentified hands in pencil and ink on the reverse of the flush-mount.

Estimate
$60,000 - 80,000 

Sold for $125,000

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Passion & Humanity: The Susie Tompkins Buell Collection

New York Auction 4 April 2019