Walker Evans

Walker Evans

Walker Evans (1903 – 1975). American.

As a graduate student in photography it was tempting for me to avoid the work of Walker Evans, simply because so many photographers totally idolized the man’s work . I suppose it was a contrarian impulse on my part.

(Unknown.) Walker Evans.

For many people, Walker Evans is the father of modern American photography. Sort of a George Washington, if George Washington was an Egyptian pharaoh. In other words, a god.

Like I said, it was tempting to ignore his work, but, in the end, impossible.

Walker Evans. Winston Salem, NC. 1935. Library of Congress.

Part of what makes the man’s work so worthy of attention is that there’s a Walker Evans for nearly every sensibility.

Walker Evans. Bethlahem, PA. 1935. New York Public Library.

There’s the Walker Evans who knew the poet Hart Crane and contributed three photographs to his seminal long poem, “The Bridge,” when it was first published.

The Walker Evans who photographed the street life and dock workers of Cuba, partly because Ernest Hemingway lent him enough money to extend his stay.

Walker Evans. Mississippi Butcher Sign. 1936. New York Public Library.

The Walker Evans who was hired by the Resettlement Administration, and it’s later incarnation as the Farm Security Administration, to document the effects of the Depression in the South, and FDR’s New Deal policies that tried to alleviate the suffering it caused.

The Walker Evans who teamed up with James Agee to create Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, telling the story of three rural families in Hale County, Alabama.

Walker Evans. Floyd Burroughs. 1936. Library of Congress.

The Walker Evans who hid a camera under his coat and made stunning candid portraits of people riding the New York subway.

And there’s the Walker Evans who created the exhibition American Photographs in 1938, the Museum of Modern Art’s first show devoted to the work of a single photographer, and the book of the same title, sequenced by Evans, which established the photobook as an intentional work of art. (This is the photobook Robert Frank later studied so closely as he was composing his own book, The Americans.)

Walker Evans. Barber shop, Atlanta. 1936. Library of Congress.

The litany goes on and on. He was also a staff writer at Time magazine and an editor at Fortune magazine. He taught in the soon-to-be-famous Yale photography program. And, when age and health started making photography challenging, he picked up the Polaroid SX-70 and showed that the instant camera, too, could make art.

I’ve studied all of the above phases of his career with a fair amount of diligence, despite my initial period of rebellion, and I recognize the great accomplishment it represents. Yet I was not prepared for the powerful emotional experience I had sifting through all his Farm Security Administration images for Loveheadhouse.

The eye, the heart, and the intelligence of Walker Evans is, in fact, singular and deeply moving. More so, I would say, than any of the other very talented FSA photographers. The work itself makes it clear why Walker Evans remains so vitally important to so many people today.