Arguably one of the most famous portraits in American history.

Walker Evans here frames Allie Mae Burroughs singly against her clapboard home in a style that has become synonymous with the American Depression & Dustbowl eras.

Evans & James Agee were on assignment for Fortune magazine in 1936 when they first met Allie Mae & Floyd Burroughs family. In the weeks proceeding the portraits that would become cultural icons, the struggling Alabama cotton sharecroppers had just been denied public assistance for themselves and four children.

Their story and so many others became the basis for the seminal 1941 Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Much is made of Allie’s drawn face for a woman of her age, just 27 here, but it is the utter hopelessness in her eyes that redefined the American experience through Evans lens.

8 x 10” proof w/ chemical damage original to the development. Exhibits simple Walker Evans typeface stamp reverse w/ several pencil numerals. 

Paper stock, size and stamp suggest that this is a period 1930s/40s copy rather than produced during the 1960s resurgence as is the case with so many on the market.

It is the likely the error that has kept it from being previously archived, a fact which allows me the great joy of handling this and the new owner of adding a nearly impossible image to their collection.