Iconic Signed Arthur Rothstein Photo, Dust Storm (1936)

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Art & Artifacts of North America

By Artemis Gallery

Apr 28, 2022

Set Reminder 2022-04-28 12:00:00 2022-04-28 12:00:00 America/New_York Bidsquare Bidsquare : Art & Artifacts of North America https://www.bidsquare.com/auctions/artemis-gallery/art-artifacts-of-north-america-9276
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• Lot Description
  Arthur Rothstein (American, 1915-1985). "Dust Storm, Cimarron County, Oklahoma" gelatin silver print, 1936 printed 1981, edition 107/300. An iconic photograph by Arthur Rothstein that he shot for the Resettlement Administration, an American federal agency (later known as the Farm Security Administration or FSA) designed to address the harsh effects of the Depression Era. Arthur Rothstein was one of the most important photographers of this period. In this black and white, large-scale photograph Rothstein depicted a farmer and his two children struggling to combat the elements during a severe dust storm typical of The Dust Bowl which devastated the farmlands of the Great Plains throughout the 1930s, transforming verdant prairies into deserts and unleashing catastrophic dust storms that tested farmers' resolve. Size of image: 19" L x 18.875" W (48.3 cm x 47.9 cm) Size of sheet: 24" L x 20.125" W (61 cm x 51.1 cm)
  
  According to Phaidon Press' The Photography Book, "The farmer and his eldest son are pressing forward energetically into the wind, while the younger child - struggling to keep up - shields his eyes to protect them from the dust. The child's gesture is the key to this scene, for it makes sense of the abraded foreground and the bleak, dust-filled sky. Without that defensive gesture, the whole picture would amount to little more than a fragment of derelict countryside. Rothstein asks his audience not to stand back and analyze but to imagine in their bodies what it might actually feel like to live in such a pitiless landscape. The photographer himself suffered eye damage due to exposure to the dust of Oklahoma, an area badly affected by drought and dust storms. This picture, taken by Rothstein for the Resettlement Administration (an American government agency set up to cope with the impact of the Depression and later known as the Farm Security Administration), became an American icon and one of the great motifs of the 1930s." (The Photography Book, Phaidon Press)
  
  In Rothstein's words, "The farmer and his two little boys were walking past a shed on their property, and I took a photograph of them with the dust swirling all around….it showed an individual in relation to his environment." Interestingly, Rothstein later noted that this dust storm scene was actually a reenactment designed to present the harrowing conditions many farmers faced during the Dust Bowl. According to the Middlebury College Museum of Art, "A few years after taking the picture, the photographer described how he directed the man and his boys to act out what a storm would be like. He asked the boy on the right to put his arms over his eyes and the father and older son to lean forward as if walking into a powerful storm. The dilapidated shed behind them speaks to the poverty of the times, although in reality the family's barn and farmhouse were much sturdier structures. While the photograph captures the dire circumstances in which many farmers found themselves, it is the result of what Rothstein called 'direction in a picture story' rather than a document of an actual dust storm."
  
  This photograph was in the collection of pioneering patron of the arts, Ginny Williams. Sotheby's hosted a series of auctions featuring art and photography in the Ginny Williams Collection in June and July of 2020. Their press release began as follows, "Born in rural Virginia in 1927, Ginny moved to Denver, Colorado in the late 1950s with her husband, Carl Williams. An avid photographer herself, who studied with Austrian-American photojournalist and photographer Ernst Haas, her collecting journey began with classical figurative photography. Her passion and keen eye eventually prompted her to open her namesake gallery in Denver in the 1980s. While her passion for photography never waned, remaining a primary focus of both her gallery and private collection, her voracious curiosity quickly widened her curatorial focus. Over time, Ginny became increasingly courageous and experimental in her selections, venturing into Abstract Expressionism and Contemporary Art and following her artists themselves through gallery shows and museum exhibitions. As the years passed, Ginny became as much of a trailblazer as the artists she collected."
  
  Provenance: private Idledale, Colorado, USA collection; ex-Ginny Williams collection of Denver, Colorado
  
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  #171277

  Condition

  Hand signed and numbered in pencil on lower right margin. "FALK LEEDS" embossed stamp on lower left margin. Crease marks here and there, most to margins and peripheries as shown.
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