Feb 16, 2023 - Sale 2626

Sale 2626 - Lot 106

Price Realized: $ 6,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,500

ARTHUR ROTHSTEIN (1915-1985)


Sharecropper's Daughter, Wilmington, N.C.
Silver print, the image measuring 194x248 mm; 7 5/8x9 3/4 inches, with the Resettlement Administration Photograph stamp with Rothstein's stamped credit and the title, RA number, and other numeric notations in pencil on verso. 1935.

Additional Details

Claiming, "photography is a universal language, transcending the boundaries of race, politics, and nationality," Arthur Rothstein documented American life in black-and-white photographs both artful and direct. A founding member of the Photo League, he believed that documentary photography was a tool for social change. He began his career as a photographer with the Resettlement Administration (later the Farm Security Administration), bringing the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression into the public eye. During this time, he took his most iconic photograph, Dust Storm, Cimarron County, Oklahoma (1936), which became emblematic of the Dust Bowl. Rothstein served as a Signal Corps photographer during WWII, and documented the Great Famine in China in 1946–47. Back in the U.S., he spent the remainder of his career editing photographs for Look and Parade and teaching the craft he had mastered so beautifully.