Walker Evans: Difference between revisions
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{{short description|American photographer and photojournalist (1903-1975)}} |
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Walker Evans (b. [[1903]] - d. [[1975]]), [[American]] [[Photography|photographer]] made famous by his work for the [[Farm Securities Administration]] documenting the effects of the [Great_Depression|depression]]. His work uses the stereotypically male large-format, dispassionate viewpoint to emphasize the plight of the American public during this period of economic unrest. He also focuses on the landscapes and architecture around him. Images like Furniture Store Sign, Birmingham, Alabama (1936) shows his ability for visual irony but backs it up by making a very valid social point. |
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{{for|the off-road and NASCAR driver|Walker Evans (racing driver)}} |
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{{Infobox artist |
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| name = Walker Evans |
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| image = Walker Evans 1937-02.jpg |
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| caption = Evans in 1937 |
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| birth_date = {{birth date|1903|11|3|mf=y}} |
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| birth_place = [[St. Louis, Missouri]], U.S. |
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| death_date = {{death date and age|1975|4|10|1903|11|3|mf=y}} |
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| death_place = [[New Haven, Connecticut]], U.S. |
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| works = ''American Photographs'' (1938) <br/> ''[[Let Us Now Praise Famous Men]]'' (1941) <br/> ''Many Are Called'' (1966) |
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}} |
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'''Walker Evans''' (November 3, 1903 – April 10, 1975) was an American [[Photography|photographer]] and [[Photojournalism|photojournalist]] best known for his work for the [[Resettlement Administration]] and the [[Farm Security Administration]] (FSA) documenting the effects of the [[Great Depression]]. Much of Evans' [[New Deal]] work uses the [[large format]], 8 × 10-inch (200×250 mm) view camera. He said that his goal as a photographer was to make pictures that are "literate, authoritative, transcendent".<ref name="Met">[http://www.metmuseum.org/special/walkerevans/learn.htm] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080314191734/http://www.metmuseum.org/special/walkerevans/learn.htm|date=March 14, 2008}}</ref> |
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Many of his works are in the permanent collections of museums and have been the subject of retrospectives at such institutions as the [[Metropolitan Museum of Art]] or the [[George Eastman Museum]].<ref>''Walker Evans'', by Jeff L. Rosenheim, Maria Morris Hambourg, Douglas Eklund, Mia Fineman ([[Princeton University Press]], 2000) {{ISBN|0-691-05078-3}}, {{ISBN|978-0-691-05078-2}}</ref> |
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Canadian anti-capitalist author [[Naomi Klein]], in her thesis tome 'No Logo' covers this point in today's context by stating that documentary photographers like Evans, [[Dorothea Lange]] and [[Margaret Bourke-White]] where the "hard-core culture jammers" of their era, by using the visual contrast between advertising slogans, by photographing advertising posters and billboards "in their actual habitat: hanging surreally over breadlines and tenaments. The manic grinning models piled into the family sedan were clearly blind to the tattered masses and sqalid conditions below." Klein goes on to describe this group as documenting "the fragility of the capitalist system by picturing fallen businessmen holding up 'Will Work For Food' signs in the shadow of looming Coke billboards and peeling hoardings." |
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==Biography== |
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As well as this strong documentary aspect, Evans went on to work in an abstract modernist, using the tools of both black-and-white and colour photography to cover both socio-political issues and more conceptual artistic ideas. |
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===Early life=== |
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[[File:Plaza del Vapor Havana, Cuba Walker Evans.jpg|thumb|[[Plaza del Vapor, Havana]], photographed by Evans in 1933]] |
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[[File:Bethlehem PA graveyard and steel mill 1935.jpg|thumb|Evans' famous November 1935 photograph, ''Bethlehem Graveyard and Steel Mill'', captures St. Michael's Cemetery in [[Bethlehem, Pennsylvania]] in the foreground and the [[Bethlehem Steel]] plant in the background.]] |
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[[Image:Allie Mae Burroughs print.jpg|thumb|Evans' 1936 photo of then-27-year-old Allie Mae Burroughs, a symbol of the [[Great Depression in the United States|Great Depression]]]] |
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[[File:Roadside stand near Birmingham, Alabama.jpg|thumb|Roadside stand near [[Birmingham, Alabama]], photographed by Evans]] |
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[[File:Frame house Charleston Walker Evans.jpg|thumb|left|Evans' March 1936 photo, ''Frame house. Charleston, South Carolina'']] |
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Walker Evans was born in [[St. Louis]], [[Missouri]] to Jessie (née Crane) and Walker Evans.<ref name=TNYT-1975-04-11>{{citation |title=Walker Evans Dies; Artist With Camera |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |date=April 11, 1975 }}</ref> His father was an advertising director. Walker was raised in an affluent environment; he spent his youth in [[Toledo, Ohio]], [[Chicago]], and [[New York City]]. He attended the [[Loomis Chaffee School|Loomis Institute]] and [[Mercersburg Academy]],<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/first/m/mellow-evans.html|title=Walker Evans by James R. Mellow|newspaper=nytimes.com|access-date=2014-04-03}}</ref> then graduated from [[Phillips Academy]] in [[Andover, Massachusetts]] in 1922. He studied French literature for a year at [[Williams College]], spending much of his time in the school's library before dropping out. He returned to New York City and worked as a night attendant in the map room of the Public Library.<ref>Evans, W., & Szarkowski, J. (1979). Walker Evans. New York: The Museum of Modern Art.</ref> After spending a year in Paris in 1926, he returned to the United States to join a literary and art crowd in New York City. [[John Cheever]], [[Hart Crane]], and [[Lincoln Kirstein]] were among his friends. He was a clerk for a stockbroker firm on Wall Street from 1927 to 1929.<ref name="Petruck">{{cite book|last1=Petruck|first1=Peninah R.|title=The Camera Viewed: Writings on Twentieth-Century Photography|date=1979|publisher=E. P. Dutton}}</ref> |
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Evans took up photography in 1928<ref name=Met/> around the time he was living in [[Ossining (town), New York|Ossining, New York]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.ossining.org/walkerevans/walkerevansossining.htm|title=Walker Evans in Ossining|publisher=Ossining.org|access-date=2012-10-26}}</ref> His influences included [[Eugène Atget]] and [[August Sander]].<ref>Peter Galassi, ''Walker Evans & Company''. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2002, p. 16.</ref> In 1930, he published three photographs ([[Brooklyn Bridge]]) in the poetry book ''The Bridge'' by Hart Crane. In 1931, he made a photo series of Victorian houses in the Boston vicinity sponsored by Lincoln Kirstein. |
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In May and June 1933, Evans took photographs in [[Cuba]] on assignment for [[Lippincott Williams & Wilkins|Lippincott]], the publisher of [[Carleton Beals]]' ''The Crime of Cuba'' (1933), a "strident account" of the dictatorship of [[Gerardo Machado]]. There, Evans drank nightly with [[Ernest Hemingway]], who lent him money to extend his two-week stay an additional week. His photographs documented street life, the presence of police, beggars and dockworkers in rags, and other waterfront scenes. He also helped Hemingway acquire photos from newspaper archives that documented some of the political violence Hemingway described in ''To Have and Have Not'' (1937). Fearing that his photographs might be deemed critical of the government and confiscated by Cuban authorities, he left 46 prints with Hemingway. He had no difficulties when returning to the United States, and 31 of his photos appeared in Beals' book. The cache of prints left with Hemingway was discovered in [[Havana]] in 2002 and exhibited at an exhibition in [[Key West]].<ref>{{cite book|date=2007 | publisher= Palgrave Macmillan | title = Havana: An Autobiography | location = New York | first= Alfredo José | last = Estrada |pages = 187, 193–95, 266n}} Estrada mistakenly identifies Beals' book as ''The Crimes of Cuba''.</ref><ref>{{cite book| first= Carleton |last= Beals | title = The Crime of Cuba | url= https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.75354 | year = 1933 | publisher = Lippincott | location = New York}}</ref> |
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===Depression-era photography=== |
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The [[Great Depression in the United States|Great Depression]] years of 1935–36 were a period of remarkable productivity and accomplishment for Evans. In 1935, Evans spent two months on a fixed-term photographic campaign in [[West Virginia]] and [[Pennsylvania]]. In June 1935, he accepted a job from the U.S. Department of the Interior to photograph a government-built resettlement community of unemployed coal miners in West Virginia. He quickly parlayed this temporary employment into a full-time position as an "information specialist" in the [[Resettlement Administration]] (later called the [[Farm Security Administration]]), a New Deal agency in the Department of Agriculture.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Department of Photographs|year=2004|title=Walker Evans (1903–1975).|url=https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/evan/hd_evan.htm|access-date=2021-03-06|website=Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History|publisher=The Metropolitan Museum of Art|publication-place=New York}}</ref> From October 1935 on, he continued to do photographic work for the RA and later the Farm Security Administration (FSA), primarily in the [[Southern United States]]. In November 1935, he visited the industrial hub of the [[Lehigh Valley]] in eastern [[Pennsylvania]], capturing photos of [[Bethlehem Steel]]. His photograph, ''Bethlehem Graveyard and Steel Mill'', which captured [[Bethlehem, Pennsylvania|Bethlehem]]'s St. Michael's Cemetery in the foreground and Bethlehem Steel's smokestacks in the background ranks among his best known.<ref>{{Cite web |last=lehighvalleylive.com |first=Nick Falsone {{!}} For |date=2016-10-17 |title=A renowned photographer's look the Valley in the Depression era |url=https://www.lehighvalleylive.com/entertainment/2016/10/a_renowned_photographers_look.html |access-date=2023-01-24 |website=lehighvalleylive |language=en}}</ref> |
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In the summer of 1936, while on leave from the FSA, writer [[James Agee]] and he were sent by ''[[Fortune (magazine)|Fortune]]'' on assignment to [[Hale County, Alabama]] for a story the magazine subsequently opted not to run. In 1941, Evans' photographs and Agee's text detailing the duo's stay with three White tenant families in southern Alabama during the Great Depression were published as the groundbreaking book ''[[Let Us Now Praise Famous Men]].''<ref name="“Devil">{{cite book|title=The Devil's Music|author=Giles Oakley|publisher=[[Da Capo Press]]|page=[https://archive.org/details/devilsmusichisto00oakl_0/page/188 188]|isbn=978-0-306-80743-5|date=1997|url=https://archive.org/details/devilsmusichisto00oakl_0/page/188}}</ref> Its detailed account of three farming families paints a deeply moving portrait of rural poverty. Critic [[Janet Malcolm]] notes that a contradiction existed between a kind of anguished dissonance in Agee's prose and the quiet, magisterial beauty of Evans' photographs of [[sharecroppers]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Malcolm |first=Janet |author-link=Janet Malcolm |year=1980 |title=Diana & Nikon: Essays on the Aesthetic of Photography |publisher=David R. Godine |page=149 |isbn=0-87923-273-0 |quote=The problem with Agee's book: the pictures and the text don't agree. The text is a howl of anger and anguish over the misery of the sharecroppers' lives...'Don't listen to him,' the serene, orderly Walker Evans photographs seem to say.}}</ref> |
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In 1936, Walker Evans, employed by the [[National Recovery Administration]] photographed three impoverished sharecropper families in [[Hale County, Alabama]]. The photographs became iconic and were praised for effectively capturing the negative effects of the [[Great Depression]] in the [[American South]]. The photographs are displayed at the [[Metropolitan Museum of Art]],<ref>{{Cite web |title=Walker Evans |url=https://www.moma.org/collection/works/52278 |access-date=2024-11-22}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Walker Evans {{!}} Alabama Tenant Farmer Wife |url=https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/284685 |access-date=2024-09-19 |website=The Metropolitan Museum of Art |language=en}}</ref> the [[Whitney Museum]]<ref>{{cite web | url=https://whitney.org/collection/works/46381 | title=Walker Evans | Tengle Children, Hale County, Alabama }}</ref> and the [[National Galleries of Scotland]]<ref>{{Cite web |title=Walker Evans Sharecropper's Family, Hale County, Alabama |url=https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/15717 |access-date=2024-11-22}}</ref> among other places. |
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The three families headed by Bud Fields, Floyd Burroughs, and Frank Tingle, lived in the Hale County town of [[Akron, Alabama]], and the owners of the land on which the families worked told them that Evans and Agee were "Soviet agents", although Allie Mae Burroughs, Floyd's wife, recalled during later interviews her discounting that information. Evans' photographs of the families made them icons of Depression-era misery and poverty. In September 2005, ''Fortune'' revisited Hale County and the descendants of the three families for its 75th-anniversary issue.<ref name=Whitford>{{cite magazine|author=Whitford, David|url=https://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2005/09/19/8272885/index.htm |title=The Most Famous Story We Never Told|magazine=Fortune|access-date=September 19, 2005}}</ref> Charles Burroughs, who was four years old when Evans and Agee visited the family, was "still angry" at them for not even sending the family a copy of the book; the son of Floyd Burroughs was also reportedly angry because the family was "cast in a light that they couldn't do any better, that they were doomed, ignorant".<ref name=Whitford/> |
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Evans continued to work for the FSA until 1938. That year, an exhibition, ''Walker Evans: American Photographs,'' was held at [[the Museum of Modern Art]], New York. This was the first exhibition in the museum devoted to the work of a single photographer. The catalogue included an accompanying essay by Lincoln Kirstein, who Evans befriended in his early days in New York. |
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In 1938, Evans also took his first photographs in the [[New York City Subway]] with a camera hidden in his coat. These were collected in book form in 1966 under the title ''[[Many Are Called]].'' These photos figure in the novel "Rules of Civility" by Amor Towles. In 1938 and 1939, Evans worked with and mentored [[Helen Levitt]]. |
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Like such other photographers as [[Henri Cartier-Bresson]], Evans rarely spent time in the darkroom making prints from his own [[Negative (photography)|negatives]]. He loosely supervised the making of prints of most of his photographs, sometimes only attaching handwritten notes to negatives with instructions on some aspect of the printing procedure. |
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=== Later work === |
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Between 1940 and 1959, Walker Evans was awarded three [[Guggenheim Fellowship|Guggenheim Fellowships]] in Photography to continue his work of making record photographs of contemporary American subjects. <ref>{{Cite web |title=Walker Evans – John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation… |url=https://www.gf.org/fellows/walker-evans/ |access-date=2024-10-09 |language=en-US}}</ref> |
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Evans was a passionate reader and writer, and in 1945 became a staff writer at ''Time''.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Walker Evans {{!}} Photography and Biography |url=https://www.famousphotographers.net/walker-evans |access-date=2023-06-13 |language=en-US}}</ref> Shortly afterward, he became an editor at ''Fortune'' through 1965. That year, he became a professor of photography on the faculty for graphic design at the Yale University School of Art. |
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In one of his last photographic projects, Evans completed a black-and-white portfolio of [[Brown Brothers Harriman & Co.]]'s offices and partners for publication in "Partners in Banking", published in 1968 to celebrate the private bank's 150th anniversary.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/nyhs/brownbrothersharriman.html |title=Guide to the Records of Brown Brothers Harriman 1696 -1973, 1995 (bulk 1820-1968) MS 78 |publisher=Dlib.nyu.edu |access-date=2012-10-26}}</ref> In 1973 and 1974, Evans used the new [[Polaroid SX-70]] [[instant camera]] for his last work; the company provided him with an unlimited supply of film, and the camera's simplicity and speed were easier for the aged photographer.<ref name="metmuseum">{{Cite web |url=https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/272071 |title=[Abandoned House] |last=Evans |first=Walker |date=1973–1974 |website=The Metropolitan Museum of Art |access-date=2020-03-07}}</ref> |
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The first definitive retrospective of his photographs, which "individually evoke an incontrovertible sense of specific places, and collectively a sense of America", according to a press release, was on view at New York's [[Museum of Modern Art]] (MOMA) in early 1971. Selected by [[John Szarkowski]], the exhibit was titled simply ''Walker Evans''.<ref>[https://www.moma.org/momaorg/shared/pdfs/docs/press_archives/4579/releases/MOMA_1971_0016_15.pdf?2010 Press release, 1971] Museum of Modern Art</ref> |
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{{clear}} |
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===Photographic Style=== |
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Evans's style has been hard to describe. John Szarkowski regarded his work as different, and MOMA considers him "one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century."<ref>{{Cite web |last= |first= |title=Walker Evans (1903–1975) {{!}} Essay {{!}} The Metropolitan Museum of Art {{!}} Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History |url=https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/evan/hd_evan.htm |access-date=2024-11-22 |website=The Met’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History |language=en}}</ref> In a 1964 lecture at Yale University, Evans described his own style as "Lyric Documentary."<ref>Volpe, A. L. (2009, November–December). Lyric vernacular. Afterimage, 37(3), 39+. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A218872540/GPS?u=21667_hbplc&sid=bookmark-GPS&xid=f536eb34</ref> Others, such as Jane Tormey, have described his later work as having a "vernacular" style, a common aesthetic made popular by Geoffrey Batchen in his seminal article "Vernacular Photographies."<ref>Volpe, A. L. (2009, November–December). Lyric vernacular. Afterimage, 37(3), 39+. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A218872540/GPS?u=25913_phl&sid=bookmark-GPS&xid=77a702ad</ref> |
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===Death and legacy=== |
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{{external media | width = 210px | float = right | |
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headerimage=[[File:Log Construction Walker Evans photo LOC.jpg|thumb|upright=1.1]] | video1 = {{YouTube|DlXfbixbGG8|Walker Evans in His Own Words}}, (4:37), [[J. Paul Getty Museum]] |
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}} |
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Evans died at his apartment in New Haven, Connecticut in 1975.<ref>{{cite book |title=Walker Evans: Photographer of America |first=Thomas |last=Nau |edition= illustrated |publisher=Macmillan |year=2007 |page= 59}}</ref> The last person Evans talked to was [[Hank O'Neal]]. In reference to the newly created ''A Vision Shared'' project, O'Neal recounts, "The picture on the back of [[Hank O'Neal#Selected publications|the book]], of him taking a picture – he actually called me up and told me he had found it”. “And then the next morning I got up and I had a phone call from [[Leslie George Katz|Leslie Katz]], who ran the [[Eakins Press]]. And Leslie said: ‘Isn’t it terrible about Walker Evans?’ And I said: ‘What are you talking about?’ He said: ‘He died last night.’ I said: ‘Cut it out. I talked to him last night twice’ ... So an hour and a half after we had our conversation, he died. He had a stroke and died."<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/jul/24/a-vision-shared-book-review-great-depression-photographers|title=A Vision Shared: the photographers who captured the Great Depression|website=[[TheGuardian.com]] |date=24 July 2018 }}</ref> |
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In 1994, the estate of Walker Evans handed over its holdings to New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art.<ref>{{cite magazine|author=Reena Jana |url=https://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2001/05/43902 |title=Is It Art, or Memorex? |magazine=Wired |access-date=2012-10-26}}</ref> The Metropolitan Museum of Art is the sole copyright holder for all works of art in all media by Walker Evans. The only exception is a group of about 1,000 negatives in collection of the [[Library of Congress]], which were produced for the Resettlement Administration and Farm Security Administration; these works are in the public domain.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.masters-of-photography.com/E/evans/evans_copyright.html |title=Walker Evans |publisher=Masters of Photography |access-date=2012-10-26}}</ref> |
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In 2000, Evans was inducted into the [[St. Louis Walk of Fame]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.stlouiswalkoffame.org/inductees/?view=achievement|title=St. Louis Walk of Fame Inductees|last=St. Louis Walk of Fame|publisher=stlouiswalkoffame.org|access-date=25 April 2013|archive-date=31 October 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121031162946/http://www.stlouiswalkoffame.org/inductees/?view=achievement|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>"[http://www.stlouiswalkoffame.org/inductees/walker-evans.html Walker Evans Entry St. Louis Walk of Fame: Walker Evans] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090606201016/http://www.stlouiswalkoffame.org/inductees/walker-evans.html |date=2009-06-06 }}"</ref> |
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==Collections== |
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*[[Addison Gallery of American Art]], [[Andover, Massachusetts]]: 142 works (as of June 2021)<ref>{{cite web |last1=Addison Gallery of American Art |title=Walker Evans (PA '22) |url=http://accessaddison.andover.edu/objects-1/portfolio?records=10&query=Portfolios%20%3D%20%221056%22&sort=0 |website=Addison Gallery of American Art |publisher=Trustees of Phillips Academy |access-date=14 June 2021}}</ref> |
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*[[Art Institute of Chicago]], Chicago, Illinois<ref>{{cite web|access-date=2018-06-28|title=Walker Evans|url=http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/artist/Walker+Evans|website=www.artic.edu}}</ref> |
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*[[George Eastman Museum]], Rochester, New York<ref>"[https://collections.eastman.org/search/walker%20evans Search]". George Eastman Museum. Accessed 28 June 2018.</ref> |
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*[[J. Paul Getty Museum]], Los Angeles, California: 1338 works (as of January 2019<ref>{{cite web|access-date=2019-02-01|title=Walker Evans (American, 1903 - 1975) (Getty Museum)|url=http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/artists/1599/walker-evans-american-1903-1975/|website=The J. Paul Getty in Los Angeles}}</ref> |
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*[[Metropolitan Museum of Art]], New York City<ref>{{cite web|access-date=2018-06-28|title=Collection |url=https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search#!?q=walker%2520evans&perPage=20&sortBy=Relevance&sortOrder=asc&offset=0&pageSize=0|website=www.metmuseum.org}}</ref> |
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*[[Museum of Modern Art]], New York City: 205 works (as of January 2019)<ref>{{cite web|access-date=2019-02-01|title=Walker Evans|url=https://www.moma.org/artists/1777|website=The Museum of Modern Art}}</ref> |
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*[[Whitney Museum of American Art]], New York City: 16 works (as of January 2019)<ref>{{cite web|access-date=2019-02-01|title=Walker Evans|url=https://whitney.org/artists/4831|website=Whitney Museum of American Art}}</ref> |
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*[[National Gallery of Victoria]], Melbourne, Australia: 36 works (as of April 2019)<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/explore/collection/artist/2193/|title=Walker EVANS {{!}} Artists {{!}} NGV|website=www.ngv.vic.gov.au|access-date=2019-04-26}}</ref> |
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*[[International Photography Hall of Fame]], St. Louis, Missouri<ref>{{cite web |title=Walker Evans |url=https://iphf.org/inductees/walker-evans/ |website=International Photography Hall of Fame |access-date=21 February 2020}}</ref> |
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==References== |
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{{Reflist}} |
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==Sources== |
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*[https://web.archive.org/web/20050430062504/http://www.geh.org/taschen/htmlsrc10/m197100060001_ful.html "Furniture Store Sign, Birmingham, Alabama"] |
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*[http://www.argus-fotokunst.de/en/exhibition/evans.html Walker Evans exhibition in the argus fotokunst art gallery in Berlin.] |
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==Further reading== |
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*Alpers, Svetlana (2020). ''Walker Evans: Starting from Scratch''. Princeton University Press. {{ISBN|9780691195872}}. |
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*{{cite book | last = Crump | first = James | title = Walker Evans: Decade by Decade | year = 2010 | publisher = [[Hatje Cantz Verlag]] | isbn = 978-3-7757-2491-3 | url-access = registration | url = https://archive.org/details/walkerevansdecad0000evan }} |
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*{{cite book | last = Hambourg | first = Maria Morris |author2=Jeff Rosenheim |author3=Douglas Eklund |author4=Mia Fineman | title = Walker Evans | publisher = Princeton University Press / The Metropolitan Museum of Art | year =2000 | isbn = 0-691-11965-1}} |
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*{{cite book | last = Leicht | first = Michael | title = Wie Katie Tingle sich weigerte, ordentlich zu posieren und Walker Evans darüber nicht grollte | publisher = transcript Verlag, Bielefeld | year = 2006 | isbn = 3-89942-436-0}} |
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*{{cite book | last = Mellow | first = James | author-link = James R. Mellow | title = Walker Evans | publisher = Basic Books | year = 1999 | isbn = 978-0-465-09077-8 | url = https://archive.org/details/walkerevans00mell }} |
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*{{cite book | last = Rathbone | first = Belinda | title = Walker Evans: A Biography | publisher = Thomas Allen & Son Ltd. | year = 2002 | isbn = 0-618-05672-6}} |
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*{{cite book | last = Rosenheim | first = Jeff |author2=Douglas Eklund | editor = Alexis Scwarzenbach | others = Maria Morris Hambourg | title = Unclassified: A Walker Evans Anthology | year = 2000 | publisher = Scalo / The Metropolitan Museum of Art | isbn = 3-908247-21-7}} |
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*{{cite book | last = Storey | first = Isabelle | title = Walker's Way: My Years With Walker Evans | publisher = PowerHouse Books | year = 2007 | isbn = 978-1-57687-362-5}} |
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*{{cite book | last = Worswick | first = Clark |author2=Belinda Rathbone | title = Walker Evans: The Lost Work | publisher = Arena Editions | year =2000 | isbn = 1-892041-29-4}} |
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==External links== |
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{{Commons category|Walker Evans}} |
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*[https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/evan/hd_evan.htm Biography of Evans at the Metropolitan Museum of Art] |
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*[http://www.getty.edu/publications/virtuallibrary/0892363177.html Getty Collections: Walker Evans: Catalogue of the Collection by Judith Keller] – available to read online or download |
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*Salt Lake Utah [http://www.ossining.org/walkerevans/walkerevansossining.htm Article and photographs regarding Walker Evans' time spent in Ossining, NY.] |
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*[http://www.luminous-lint.com/app/photographer/Walker__Evans/A/ Luminous-Lint page] |
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*[https://web.archive.org/web/20070929034908/http://ericetheridge.com/wordblog/archives/2007/08/the_missing_cri.html/ Tod Papageorge on Walker Evans and Robert Frank] |
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*[https://www.thegreatcat.org/the-cat-in-art-and-photos-2/cats-in-art-20th-century/walker-evans-1903-1975-american/ Walker Evan's Cats] |
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{{FSA Photographers}} |
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{{Authority control}} |
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Evans, Walker}} |
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[[Category:American photojournalists]] |
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[[Category:American portrait photographers]] |
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[[Category:Social documentary photographers]] |
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[[Category:1903 births]] |
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[[Category:1975 deaths]] |
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[[Category:American social realist artists]] |
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[[Category:Phillips Academy alumni]] |
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[[Category:Williams College alumni]] |
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[[Category:People from Old Lyme, Connecticut]] |
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[[Category:20th-century American photographers]] |
Latest revision as of 12:17, 22 November 2024
Walker Evans | |
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Born | St. Louis, Missouri, U.S. | November 3, 1903
Died | April 10, 1975 New Haven, Connecticut, U.S. | (aged 71)
Notable work | American Photographs (1938) Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941) Many Are Called (1966) |
Walker Evans (November 3, 1903 – April 10, 1975) was an American photographer and photojournalist best known for his work for the Resettlement Administration and the Farm Security Administration (FSA) documenting the effects of the Great Depression. Much of Evans' New Deal work uses the large format, 8 × 10-inch (200×250 mm) view camera. He said that his goal as a photographer was to make pictures that are "literate, authoritative, transcendent".[1]
Many of his works are in the permanent collections of museums and have been the subject of retrospectives at such institutions as the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the George Eastman Museum.[2]
Biography
[edit]Early life
[edit]Walker Evans was born in St. Louis, Missouri to Jessie (née Crane) and Walker Evans.[3] His father was an advertising director. Walker was raised in an affluent environment; he spent his youth in Toledo, Ohio, Chicago, and New York City. He attended the Loomis Institute and Mercersburg Academy,[4] then graduated from Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts in 1922. He studied French literature for a year at Williams College, spending much of his time in the school's library before dropping out. He returned to New York City and worked as a night attendant in the map room of the Public Library.[5] After spending a year in Paris in 1926, he returned to the United States to join a literary and art crowd in New York City. John Cheever, Hart Crane, and Lincoln Kirstein were among his friends. He was a clerk for a stockbroker firm on Wall Street from 1927 to 1929.[6]
Evans took up photography in 1928[1] around the time he was living in Ossining, New York.[7] His influences included Eugène Atget and August Sander.[8] In 1930, he published three photographs (Brooklyn Bridge) in the poetry book The Bridge by Hart Crane. In 1931, he made a photo series of Victorian houses in the Boston vicinity sponsored by Lincoln Kirstein.
In May and June 1933, Evans took photographs in Cuba on assignment for Lippincott, the publisher of Carleton Beals' The Crime of Cuba (1933), a "strident account" of the dictatorship of Gerardo Machado. There, Evans drank nightly with Ernest Hemingway, who lent him money to extend his two-week stay an additional week. His photographs documented street life, the presence of police, beggars and dockworkers in rags, and other waterfront scenes. He also helped Hemingway acquire photos from newspaper archives that documented some of the political violence Hemingway described in To Have and Have Not (1937). Fearing that his photographs might be deemed critical of the government and confiscated by Cuban authorities, he left 46 prints with Hemingway. He had no difficulties when returning to the United States, and 31 of his photos appeared in Beals' book. The cache of prints left with Hemingway was discovered in Havana in 2002 and exhibited at an exhibition in Key West.[9][10]
Depression-era photography
[edit]The Great Depression years of 1935–36 were a period of remarkable productivity and accomplishment for Evans. In 1935, Evans spent two months on a fixed-term photographic campaign in West Virginia and Pennsylvania. In June 1935, he accepted a job from the U.S. Department of the Interior to photograph a government-built resettlement community of unemployed coal miners in West Virginia. He quickly parlayed this temporary employment into a full-time position as an "information specialist" in the Resettlement Administration (later called the Farm Security Administration), a New Deal agency in the Department of Agriculture.[11] From October 1935 on, he continued to do photographic work for the RA and later the Farm Security Administration (FSA), primarily in the Southern United States. In November 1935, he visited the industrial hub of the Lehigh Valley in eastern Pennsylvania, capturing photos of Bethlehem Steel. His photograph, Bethlehem Graveyard and Steel Mill, which captured Bethlehem's St. Michael's Cemetery in the foreground and Bethlehem Steel's smokestacks in the background ranks among his best known.[12]
In the summer of 1936, while on leave from the FSA, writer James Agee and he were sent by Fortune on assignment to Hale County, Alabama for a story the magazine subsequently opted not to run. In 1941, Evans' photographs and Agee's text detailing the duo's stay with three White tenant families in southern Alabama during the Great Depression were published as the groundbreaking book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.[13] Its detailed account of three farming families paints a deeply moving portrait of rural poverty. Critic Janet Malcolm notes that a contradiction existed between a kind of anguished dissonance in Agee's prose and the quiet, magisterial beauty of Evans' photographs of sharecroppers.[14]
In 1936, Walker Evans, employed by the National Recovery Administration photographed three impoverished sharecropper families in Hale County, Alabama. The photographs became iconic and were praised for effectively capturing the negative effects of the Great Depression in the American South. The photographs are displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art,[15][16] the Whitney Museum[17] and the National Galleries of Scotland[18] among other places.
The three families headed by Bud Fields, Floyd Burroughs, and Frank Tingle, lived in the Hale County town of Akron, Alabama, and the owners of the land on which the families worked told them that Evans and Agee were "Soviet agents", although Allie Mae Burroughs, Floyd's wife, recalled during later interviews her discounting that information. Evans' photographs of the families made them icons of Depression-era misery and poverty. In September 2005, Fortune revisited Hale County and the descendants of the three families for its 75th-anniversary issue.[19] Charles Burroughs, who was four years old when Evans and Agee visited the family, was "still angry" at them for not even sending the family a copy of the book; the son of Floyd Burroughs was also reportedly angry because the family was "cast in a light that they couldn't do any better, that they were doomed, ignorant".[19]
Evans continued to work for the FSA until 1938. That year, an exhibition, Walker Evans: American Photographs, was held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. This was the first exhibition in the museum devoted to the work of a single photographer. The catalogue included an accompanying essay by Lincoln Kirstein, who Evans befriended in his early days in New York.
In 1938, Evans also took his first photographs in the New York City Subway with a camera hidden in his coat. These were collected in book form in 1966 under the title Many Are Called. These photos figure in the novel "Rules of Civility" by Amor Towles. In 1938 and 1939, Evans worked with and mentored Helen Levitt.
Like such other photographers as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Evans rarely spent time in the darkroom making prints from his own negatives. He loosely supervised the making of prints of most of his photographs, sometimes only attaching handwritten notes to negatives with instructions on some aspect of the printing procedure.
Later work
[edit]Between 1940 and 1959, Walker Evans was awarded three Guggenheim Fellowships in Photography to continue his work of making record photographs of contemporary American subjects. [20]
Evans was a passionate reader and writer, and in 1945 became a staff writer at Time.[21] Shortly afterward, he became an editor at Fortune through 1965. That year, he became a professor of photography on the faculty for graphic design at the Yale University School of Art.
In one of his last photographic projects, Evans completed a black-and-white portfolio of Brown Brothers Harriman & Co.'s offices and partners for publication in "Partners in Banking", published in 1968 to celebrate the private bank's 150th anniversary.[22] In 1973 and 1974, Evans used the new Polaroid SX-70 instant camera for his last work; the company provided him with an unlimited supply of film, and the camera's simplicity and speed were easier for the aged photographer.[23]
The first definitive retrospective of his photographs, which "individually evoke an incontrovertible sense of specific places, and collectively a sense of America", according to a press release, was on view at New York's Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in early 1971. Selected by John Szarkowski, the exhibit was titled simply Walker Evans.[24]
Photographic Style
[edit]Evans's style has been hard to describe. John Szarkowski regarded his work as different, and MOMA considers him "one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century."[25] In a 1964 lecture at Yale University, Evans described his own style as "Lyric Documentary."[26] Others, such as Jane Tormey, have described his later work as having a "vernacular" style, a common aesthetic made popular by Geoffrey Batchen in his seminal article "Vernacular Photographies."[27]
Death and legacy
[edit]External videos | |
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Walker Evans in His Own Words on YouTube, (4:37), J. Paul Getty Museum |
Evans died at his apartment in New Haven, Connecticut in 1975.[28] The last person Evans talked to was Hank O'Neal. In reference to the newly created A Vision Shared project, O'Neal recounts, "The picture on the back of the book, of him taking a picture – he actually called me up and told me he had found it”. “And then the next morning I got up and I had a phone call from Leslie Katz, who ran the Eakins Press. And Leslie said: ‘Isn’t it terrible about Walker Evans?’ And I said: ‘What are you talking about?’ He said: ‘He died last night.’ I said: ‘Cut it out. I talked to him last night twice’ ... So an hour and a half after we had our conversation, he died. He had a stroke and died."[29]
In 1994, the estate of Walker Evans handed over its holdings to New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art.[30] The Metropolitan Museum of Art is the sole copyright holder for all works of art in all media by Walker Evans. The only exception is a group of about 1,000 negatives in collection of the Library of Congress, which were produced for the Resettlement Administration and Farm Security Administration; these works are in the public domain.[31]
In 2000, Evans was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame.[32][33]
Collections
[edit]- Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts: 142 works (as of June 2021)[34]
- Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois[35]
- George Eastman Museum, Rochester, New York[36]
- J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California: 1338 works (as of January 2019[37]
- Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City[38]
- Museum of Modern Art, New York City: 205 works (as of January 2019)[39]
- Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City: 16 works (as of January 2019)[40]
- National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia: 36 works (as of April 2019)[41]
- International Photography Hall of Fame, St. Louis, Missouri[42]
References
[edit]- ^ a b [1] Archived March 14, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Walker Evans, by Jeff L. Rosenheim, Maria Morris Hambourg, Douglas Eklund, Mia Fineman (Princeton University Press, 2000) ISBN 0-691-05078-3, ISBN 978-0-691-05078-2
- ^ "Walker Evans Dies; Artist With Camera", The New York Times, April 11, 1975
- ^ "Walker Evans by James R. Mellow". nytimes.com. Retrieved 2014-04-03.
- ^ Evans, W., & Szarkowski, J. (1979). Walker Evans. New York: The Museum of Modern Art.
- ^ Petruck, Peninah R. (1979). The Camera Viewed: Writings on Twentieth-Century Photography. E. P. Dutton.
- ^ "Walker Evans in Ossining". Ossining.org. Retrieved 2012-10-26.
- ^ Peter Galassi, Walker Evans & Company. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2002, p. 16.
- ^ Estrada, Alfredo José (2007). Havana: An Autobiography. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 187, 193–95, 266n. Estrada mistakenly identifies Beals' book as The Crimes of Cuba.
- ^ Beals, Carleton (1933). The Crime of Cuba. New York: Lippincott.
- ^ Department of Photographs (2004). "Walker Evans (1903–1975)". Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved 2021-03-06.
- ^ lehighvalleylive.com, Nick Falsone | For (2016-10-17). "A renowned photographer's look the Valley in the Depression era". lehighvalleylive. Retrieved 2023-01-24.
- ^ Giles Oakley (1997). The Devil's Music. Da Capo Press. p. 188. ISBN 978-0-306-80743-5.
- ^ Malcolm, Janet (1980). Diana & Nikon: Essays on the Aesthetic of Photography. David R. Godine. p. 149. ISBN 0-87923-273-0.
The problem with Agee's book: the pictures and the text don't agree. The text is a howl of anger and anguish over the misery of the sharecroppers' lives...'Don't listen to him,' the serene, orderly Walker Evans photographs seem to say.
- ^ "Walker Evans". Retrieved 2024-11-22.
- ^ "Walker Evans | Alabama Tenant Farmer Wife". The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved 2024-09-19.
- ^ "Walker Evans | Tengle Children, Hale County, Alabama".
- ^ "Walker Evans Sharecropper's Family, Hale County, Alabama". Retrieved 2024-11-22.
- ^ a b Whitford, David. "The Most Famous Story We Never Told". Fortune. Retrieved September 19, 2005.
- ^ "Walker Evans – John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation…". Retrieved 2024-10-09.
- ^ "Walker Evans | Photography and Biography". Retrieved 2023-06-13.
- ^ "Guide to the Records of Brown Brothers Harriman 1696 -1973, 1995 (bulk 1820-1968) MS 78". Dlib.nyu.edu. Retrieved 2012-10-26.
- ^ Evans, Walker (1973–1974). "[Abandoned House]". The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved 2020-03-07.
- ^ Press release, 1971 Museum of Modern Art
- ^ "Walker Evans (1903–1975) | Essay | The Metropolitan Museum of Art | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History". The Met’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. Retrieved 2024-11-22.
- ^ Volpe, A. L. (2009, November–December). Lyric vernacular. Afterimage, 37(3), 39+. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A218872540/GPS?u=21667_hbplc&sid=bookmark-GPS&xid=f536eb34
- ^ Volpe, A. L. (2009, November–December). Lyric vernacular. Afterimage, 37(3), 39+. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A218872540/GPS?u=25913_phl&sid=bookmark-GPS&xid=77a702ad
- ^ Nau, Thomas (2007). Walker Evans: Photographer of America (illustrated ed.). Macmillan. p. 59.
- ^ "A Vision Shared: the photographers who captured the Great Depression". TheGuardian.com. 24 July 2018.
- ^ Reena Jana. "Is It Art, or Memorex?". Wired. Retrieved 2012-10-26.
- ^ "Walker Evans". Masters of Photography. Retrieved 2012-10-26.
- ^ St. Louis Walk of Fame. "St. Louis Walk of Fame Inductees". stlouiswalkoffame.org. Archived from the original on 31 October 2012. Retrieved 25 April 2013.
- ^ "Walker Evans Entry St. Louis Walk of Fame: Walker Evans Archived 2009-06-06 at the Wayback Machine"
- ^ Addison Gallery of American Art. "Walker Evans (PA '22)". Addison Gallery of American Art. Trustees of Phillips Academy. Retrieved 14 June 2021.
- ^ "Walker Evans". www.artic.edu. Retrieved 2018-06-28.
- ^ "Search". George Eastman Museum. Accessed 28 June 2018.
- ^ "Walker Evans (American, 1903 - 1975) (Getty Museum)". The J. Paul Getty in Los Angeles. Retrieved 2019-02-01.
- ^ "Collection". www.metmuseum.org. Retrieved 2018-06-28.
- ^ "Walker Evans". The Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved 2019-02-01.
- ^ "Walker Evans". Whitney Museum of American Art. Retrieved 2019-02-01.
- ^ "Walker EVANS | Artists | NGV". www.ngv.vic.gov.au. Retrieved 2019-04-26.
- ^ "Walker Evans". International Photography Hall of Fame. Retrieved 21 February 2020.
Sources
[edit]- "Furniture Store Sign, Birmingham, Alabama"
- Walker Evans exhibition in the argus fotokunst art gallery in Berlin.
Further reading
[edit]- Alpers, Svetlana (2020). Walker Evans: Starting from Scratch. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691195872.
- Crump, James (2010). Walker Evans: Decade by Decade. Hatje Cantz Verlag. ISBN 978-3-7757-2491-3.
- Hambourg, Maria Morris; Jeff Rosenheim; Douglas Eklund; Mia Fineman (2000). Walker Evans. Princeton University Press / The Metropolitan Museum of Art. ISBN 0-691-11965-1.
- Leicht, Michael (2006). Wie Katie Tingle sich weigerte, ordentlich zu posieren und Walker Evans darüber nicht grollte. transcript Verlag, Bielefeld. ISBN 3-89942-436-0.
- Mellow, James (1999). Walker Evans. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-09077-8.
- Rathbone, Belinda (2002). Walker Evans: A Biography. Thomas Allen & Son Ltd. ISBN 0-618-05672-6.
- Rosenheim, Jeff; Douglas Eklund (2000). Alexis Scwarzenbach (ed.). Unclassified: A Walker Evans Anthology. Maria Morris Hambourg. Scalo / The Metropolitan Museum of Art. ISBN 3-908247-21-7.
- Storey, Isabelle (2007). Walker's Way: My Years With Walker Evans. PowerHouse Books. ISBN 978-1-57687-362-5.
- Worswick, Clark; Belinda Rathbone (2000). Walker Evans: The Lost Work. Arena Editions. ISBN 1-892041-29-4.
External links
[edit]- Biography of Evans at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Getty Collections: Walker Evans: Catalogue of the Collection by Judith Keller – available to read online or download
- Salt Lake Utah Article and photographs regarding Walker Evans' time spent in Ossining, NY.
- Luminous-Lint page
- Tod Papageorge on Walker Evans and Robert Frank
- Walker Evan's Cats