ABOUT WALKER EVANS
Born in Missouri, Walker Evans (1903-1975) is best known for his 1930s and 1940s documentary photographs of the United States. He spent his early career experimentally photographing the streets of New York. From 1935, he worked for the Farm Security Administration and travelled through the mid-West and Southern states of America creating his most important and significant work. His collaboration with the writer James Agee for Fortune magazine also resulted in the groundbreaking book, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941). In 1938, Evans was the first photographer that the Museum of Modern Art in New York honoured with a solo exhibition called Walker Evans, American Photographs.
Early Life
Walker Evans was born in St Louis, Missouri on 3 November 1903. His father was a member of a successful advertising firm, and he had a comfortable upbringing. On graduating in 1922, from a private school in Andover, Massachusetts, he hoped to become a writer. He attended the prestigious Williams College, but dropped out after a year. In 1926, he moved to Paris to try and immerse himself in the avant-garde of the time. But he found that he couldn’t write a word and, after two years, returned to the United States.
Photographic Career
Soon after, Evans turned to photography. He spent his early career photographing the streets of New York, experimenting with high and low angles, patterns of light and shadow and various compositions. He later published his first three prints of the Brooklyn Bridge, in the poet, Hart Crane’s book, The Bridge, in 1930.
Due to his inability to find steady work, Evans was living an impoverished life in New York City. However, in 1931, he was asked to photograph Victorian architecture, in Boston, Massachusetts, by the writer and patron of the arts, Lincoln Kirstein. Evans had to use an 8 x 10 view camera, a completely different piece of machinery from his usual 35mm Leica camera. He became absorbed in the project, being fastidious to all minor details concerning the outlook and feel of the photographs. Gaining some success, he was then sent to Cuba in 1933, to work on a reportage project about the country’s declining political conditions. It was in Cuba that he found the documentary calling that so acutely fitted his style.
Farm Security Administration
In 1935, Evans was hired as an information specialist by the Farm Security Administration, today known as the FSA, which developed aid programs for impoverished farmers during the Great Depression. Essentially the photographs taken were used as evidence of the extreme poverty in rural parts of the United States. Evans travelled through the mid-west and southern states, photographing, with precision, everything he saw. It was during this time that he created his most important and significant work, partly for the FSA and partly with the writer, James Agee, for Fortune magazine. The latter project resulted in the groundbreaking book, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941).
Later Life
In 1938, one year after Evans had finished photographing for the FSA, the Museum of Modern Art in New York honoured Evans with a solo exhibition of his pictures – the first it had ever given to a photographer. The exhibition was called Walker Evans, American Photographs and included 100 of his photographs.
In 1938, Evans started a project on the subways of New York, using a concealed camera. He worked on this project until 1941 and, in 1943, went to work for TIME magazine as an art critic. In 1944 he moved to Fortune magazine as a staff photographer. Evans died on 10 April 1975 at his home in Old Lyme, Connecticut.
QUOTE BY WALKER EVANS
“Die knowing something. You're not here long.”
― Walker Evans
WHAT I WISH FOR YOU TODAY
LIVE & LEARN.