Walker Evans

Walker Evans Photography

Walker Evans Exhibition

Walker Evans dropped out of college in 1926 and went to Paris, where he developed an interest in literature. He returned to the United States in 1927 and found himself alienated from American society and its mores. In turning to photography, he was influenced by Flaubert’s attitude that the artist should be invisible but all-powerful, and he reacted against the pictorialism then in vogue. He moved toward a clear, straightforward, “truthful” style. In John Szarkowski’s words: “He thought of photography as a way of preserving segments out of time itself, without regard for the conventional structures of picture-building. Nothing was to be imposed on experience; the truth was to be discovered, not constructed” (Walker Evans [1971], p.12).           

In the mid-1930s Walker Evans made photographs for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). After 1938 and through the fifties he photographed increasingly in the subways, in the streets, and from moving trains. During this period he also wrote for Time magazine (1943-1945) and wrote and photographed for Fortune (1945-1965). When, in later years, he returned to the more formal style of his youth, the images were more personal and autobiographical.

John R. Gossage, describing Walker Evans as “an artist who hides his hand,” wrote: “Walker Evans’s work, even on a casual reading, consists of facts immediately present to the attention. There are no overt references to symbology or metaphor, no reaching for drama or art, yet all these are achieved. These remarkable photographs coerce, persuade, not to a point of view, but to a deeply felt conviction that these pictured things really did exist – they really looked like that – on that day…. But don’t let these photographs fool you. There is nothing simple about being this direct, nothing casual about the plainness of these scenes and, most importantly, there is nothing detached for sentimental in this quiet passion. When you start to examine the trick these photographs have played on you – inducing you to believe that the photograph presents the scene ‘ the way it really was’ – a certain complex balance begins to assert itself: intelligence, and, more importantly, passion have allowed the images just the proper amount of space to complete the illusion, while at the same time being sufficiently expressive to sustain their maker. This result can only be achieved by a photographer with the kind of unalterable assurance in command of his art which enables him to permit something merely to be while simultaneously retaining involvement and kinship with it” (14 American Photographers catalogue, p. 11, listed in chapter 7).”¹

¹ From Lee D. Witkin, and Barbara London, "Selected Photographers: A Collector's Compendium," The Photograph Collector's Guide, Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1979, 135.

Bibliography:

• Andrei Codrescu, Signs Walker Evans, Christopher Hudson, 1998.
• Peter Galassi, Walker Evans and Company, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2000.
• Michael Brix, Birgit Mayer, Walker Evans America, Rizzoli, 1990.
• Jeff L. Rosenheim, Douglas Eklund, Unclassified: A Walker Evans Anthology, Scalo Zurich in association with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1998.
• Rodger Kingston, Walker Evans in Print: An Illustrated Bibliography, R.P. Kingston Photographs, 1995.
• Lesley K. Baier, Walker Evans at Fortune, 1945-1965, Wellesley College Museum, 1978.
• Giles Mora, John T. Hill, Walker Evans The Hungry Eye, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1993.
• Judith Keller, Walker Evans: The Getty Museum Collection, The J. Paul Getty Museum, 1995.
• Lincoln Kirstein, Walker Evans: American Photographs, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1938.
• Ellen Fleurov, Walker Evans: Simple Secrets, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1998.
• Maria Morris Hambourg, Jeff L. Rosenheim, Douglas Eklund, Mia Fineman, Walker Evans, Princeton University Press, 2000.
• Jerry L. Thompson, Walker Evans at Work, Harper & Row, 1982.
• Jerald C. Maddox, Walker Evans: Photographs for the Farm Security Administration, 1935-1938, Da Capo Press, Inc., 1973.
• Sarah Greenough, Walker Evans: Subways and Streets, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1991.
• Gilles Mora, Walker Evans, Photo Poche, 1990.
• Robert Plunket, Walker Evans: Florida, J. Paul Getty Museum, 2000.
• Belinda Rathbone, Walker Evans: A Biography, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1995.
• John Szarkowski, Walker Evans, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1971.
• Gilles Mora, John T. Hill, Walker Evans: Havana 1933, Pantheon Books, 1989.
• Luc Sante, Walker Evans 55, Phaidon Press Limited, NY, 2001.
• James R. Mellow, Hilton Kramer, Walker Evans, Basic Books, 1999.
• Christian Peterson, Walker Evans, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 2003.
• John T. Hill, Alan Trachtenberg, Walker Evans: Lyric Documentary, Steidl Publishers, Gottingen, Germany, 2006.