Mother Hides her Face in Shame After Putting her Children up for Sale, 1948
Captured here: Mother Hides Her Face In Shame After Putting Her Children Up For Sale, Chicago, 1948. The scene dates to 1948, a detail that changes how you read every face and object in the frame.
The photograph of children advertised for sale in Chicago in 1948 ran in newspapers as a story about a destitute family facing eviction. It became an enduring image of postwar poverty in the midst of the American boom. Reporting decades later confirmed the children were indeed given up, and several of them found each other again as adults.
Pictures of ordinary life are some of the most valuable historical documents we have. Grand events were always going to be recorded, but a normal day — how people worked, dressed, shopped, and passed the time — survives only when someone happened to point a camera at it.
