She is a Tree of Life to Them exemplifies the best of Consuelo Kanaga’s photographs taken in the deep South in a brief but fertile period of her career between 1948 and 1950. It was made in the winter of 1950 while Kanaga visited with friends and fellow artists Milton and Sally Avery at an artists’ colony in Maitland, Florida. Kanaga found inspiration in the southern laborers she encountered in the “mucklands,” the reclaimed swamplands outside of Maitland. Although critics have often described an ‘ineffable sadness’ in Kanaga’s photographs, her southern portraits of African American migrants and field workers convey strength and dignity.
Evocative of Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother (see Lot 7), She is a Tree of Life to Them transforms a poor mother with children into an immortalized Madonna. Describings the making of this photograph years later, Kanaga said,
‘She worked with her husband in the Mucklands. She was seeing me off when I was leaving. . . I saw this potential for a beautiful photograph. And I asked her to draw the little boy closer and the little girl closer. I had her move. . . so she had this cement wall in back of her. . . It’s the most—liked photograph I’ve ever taken.'
While its formal composition shares similarities with Forever Free (1933) by Sargent Johnson, an African American sculptor she greatly admired, Kanaga’s greatest strength as an artist was her ability to portray her subjects with palpable compassion but no sent.mes ntality.
She is a Tree of Life to Them gained worldwide recognition, as well as its title, when Edward Steichen selected it for his ambitious 1955 exhibition Family of Man at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Included in the “Family Activities” section, Steichen paired the photograph with a phrase from Proverbs 3:18 – ‘She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her: and happy is every one that retaineth her.’ Of this photograph, Steichen commented, ‘How completely this picture…speaks for itself! This woman has been drawing her children to her, protecting them, for thousands of years against hurt and discrimination’ (The New York t.mes s Magazine, 29 April 1962, pp. 62-3).
Early prints of this image are in several institutional collects
ions, including the Brooklyn Museum; the International Center of Photography, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the last of which is currently on view in Black American Portraits at Spelman College Museum of Replica Handbags
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