$2,706
Wright Morris (American, 1910-1998) Farmhouse in Winter, near Lincoln, Nebraska , 1940, printed later. Signed "Wright Morris" in pencil on the verso l.r. Gelatin silver print, 10 1/2 x 13 1/2 in. (26.7 x 34.3 cm), framed. Condition: Scattered spot toning. N.B. In the late 1930s and 1940s the novelist Wright Morris made beautiful and poignant photographs exploring the rural culture of the American countryside. Morris's emphasis was on architecture and still life, but unlike the work of Walker Evans, which provides a formal description of American vernacular structures, Morris photographed farms and homesteads that were fading into the past. Although they are mostly without human subjects, his images offer evidence of bad luck, failure, misplaced faith, tenacity, and human fallibility. As he wrote after a cross-country journey in 1938, "I saw the American landscape crowded with ruins I wanted to salvage." [1] [1] Quoted in Sandra S. Phillips and John Szarkowski, Wright Morris: Origin of a Species (San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Art, 1992), p. 27.
Auctioneer:
Skinner
Date:
2016-05-13
