19

A selection of 4 photographs by Dorothea Lange, Ben Shahn, Arnold Eagle/David Robbins, and Arthur Rothstein. 1935-38; the Lange printed 1970s.

Silver prints.
The Lange with a notation in pencil in an unknown hand; the Shahn with a Library of Congress stamp and notations "Stryker made this for RJ for the asking" in ink in Romana Javitz's hand; the Eagle/Robbins with two Federal Art Project stamps, one with the photographers' credits, date, title, and negative number in ink, and a typed caption label with extended title information and credits; and the Rothstein with his Resettlement Administration stamp, the RA number in pencil, and two typed caption labels with the title and date, all on verso.

Dorothea Lange's Damaged Child, Shacktown, Elm Grove, Oklahoma, August 1936; printed 1970s * Ben Shahn's Main Street, Plain City, Ohio, August 1938 * Arnold Eagle and David Robbins' Slum Conditions in the Congested East Side and Chelsea Districts of New York City are recorded in a group of "one-third of a nation" photographs, May- September, 1938 * Arthur Rothstein's Child of North Carolina Sharecropper, He Has Two Strikes on Him Already, September 1935
The images 6 3/4 x 9 3/8 in. (17.1 x 23.8 cm.), and slightly larger, and the reverse, the sheets slightly larger

  • Provenance:
    The Collection of Romana Javitz; by descent to the Present Owner
  • Notes:
    Romana Javitz (1903-80) was curator of The New York Public Library's Picture Collection from 1928-68, where she assembled one of the most historically important and artistically significant collections of 20th-century photographs. An early champion of photography who said "great photography ranks with great art," she established personal relationships with Dorothea Lange, Lewis Hine, and Berenice Abbott, encouraging artists to bring her work, which she subsequently purchased for the library.

    In 1936, Javitz worked with Roy Stryker, head of the Farm Security Administration's Photographic Section to organize the files of the Resettlement Administration. She visited Washington D.C. to format the photographs into a collection, and he sent her duplicate prints of some work to ensure their preservation before it was clear that they would be preserved in D.C.

    Javitz felt strongly about this material. The seminal text Words on Pictures (edited by Anthony T. Troncale) records interviews in which she discussed the body of work (the collection had, ultimately, 40,000 prints from the various photographers who worked for the F.S.A.), highlighting both the new documentary mode of image-making as well as the artistic success of the work. Javitz recalled "when the photographs came to us, they just gave us a completely new eye. It was really a third eye for all our trouble. You have no idea of what richness it meant to us. First of all, it was the first time that we had images that were clean cut. They weren't made to sell records or soap or whatnot" (p. 208). Her deep understanding of the material extended to the idea of the photo essay. "You have a sense that every picture is just like one word of a sentence," she said about Lange's work (p. 205) and describing FSA photographs generally arriving at the NYPL. Seeing just one is not enough, she argued.

    "Curators of photographic collections-and I'm going to include Steichen-tried very hard to present photography as an art but actually photographs as documents is a much more exciting subject" (p. 230), Javitz said in one interview. Her strong sense of considering the image content first, created a dynamic collection of images in which the idea of hierarchies and isolation were simply not applicable.
  • Condition:
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January 29, 2026 12:00 PM EST
New York, NY, US

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