(PHOTOGRAPHY) Roland L Freeman Photograph from his Arabbers

Sale 2562 - Lot 323

Unsold

Estimate: $ 2,500 - $ 3,500

(PHOTOGRAPHY.) Roland L. Freeman. Photograph from his Arabbers of Baltimore series. Silver print, 8 x 10 inches; photographer's 1990 copyright stamp, signature, and other markings on verso. Baltimore, MD, image 1986, printed 1990

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Baltimore native Roland L. Freeman (born 1936) began his career as a photographer during the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, and has continued documenting Black folkways through a variety of projects through the present. Eight books of his work have been published, in addition to countless photo essays and magazine work, and touring exhibitions. He is the founder of the Group for Cultural Documentation. He has been a research fellow at the Smithsonian Institution's Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, was in 1970 the first photographer to be awarded a Young Humanist Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Humanities, and in 1994 received the Living Legend Award for Distinguished Achievement in Photography from the National Black Arts Festival. In 2007 he received the Beth Lomax Howes Award from the National Endowment for the Arts in recognition of his career of documentary photography and exhibition work. These two lots are, so far as we know, the first of his prints to appear at auction.

This photograph was shot for Freeman's 1989 book "The Arabbers of Baltimore," which documented the disappearing culture of Baltimore's street vendors selling produce from horse-drawn carts. Freeman had captioned this image "Walter 'Teeth' Kelly mending wagons at the Kratz stable, Southwest Baltimore, MD, July 1986."