|Dates: ||1903, 3 November - 1975, 10 April|
|Born: ||US, MO, St. Louis|
|Died: ||US, CT, New Haven|
American photographer who is best known for his social and documentary work.
Walker Evans is one of the most celebrated American photographers. During the Great Depression of the 1930's, he worked for the American governmentís Farm Security Administration programme, and created some of the most potent and memorable images of the era. His documentary style focussed on the details of individual human lives in unforgiving circumstances. "I am for manís work", he said; "nature bores me as an art form". Evans went on to take pictures of people on the New York subway using a hidden camera, a series on tools and Polaroid images of rural and urban Americana.
This biography is courtesy and copyright of the Victoria & Albert Museum and is included here with permission.
Date last updated: 11 Nov 2011.
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Biography provided by Focal Press
The Godfather of large format American 20th century documentary photography, who was committed to straight, unadorned, black and white documentation. He established his transparent, unheroic, clinical style as a photographer for the Farm Security Administration (1935Ė1938). His book American Photographs (1938) established the idea that looking at photographs in a book is fundamentally different than looking at photographs on the wall and that how the photographs were sequenced was critical in establishing meaning. It also revealed his affection for photographing signs (text), which often self-labeled the photograph. Evansí self-effacing approach with its edge of pessimism, made people believe in the power of the plain photograph. His second book with James Agee, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941), was illustrated with Evansí unsentimental portraits of Alabama sharecroppers. His puritanical objectivity and economy of composition made the hardship of their situation self-evident yet preserved their dignity. From 1945 to 1965 he was a staff writer and photographer for Fortune.
(Author: Robert Hirsch - Independent scholar and writer)
Michael Peres (Editor-in-Chief), 2007, Focal Encyclopedia of Photography, 4th edition, (Focal Press) [ISBN-10: 0240807405, ISBN-13: 978-0240807409]
(Used with permission)
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|Family history |
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Exhibitions on this website
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Walker Evans began photographing seriously in 1928. After returning from Europe at the age of twenty-four he found himself in New York where his passion for photography was ignited. While experimenting with different photographic styles, Evans created images of a variety of subjects from very abstract architectural work to what at the time was cutting edge street photography. He made many images that many people felt paved the way for future photographers such as Robert Frank and Gary Winogrand.
In the early 1930s Evans moved on to a new project which would help develop his documentary style. He spent time in New England photographing Victorian homes for an exhibition to coincide with the publication of a book on 19th century architecture. This is where Evans first began using a large format camera. Later Evans was asked by publisher J.P. Lippencott to produce photographs to illustrate a book about Cuba by radical journalist Carleton Beals. Evans spent three weeks in Havana creating images which continued to solidify his style, but the work that would define Evans and forever place him in the consciousness of the American public was soon to follow.
After a period of time spent photographing throughout the South Evans began photographing for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) in 1935. Evans, along with other photographers like Dorothea Lange and Russell Lee, was hired by the government to document the lives of the American farmer during the 1930s. In his photographs of crumbling farm towns and faces etched with despair and hope we can still see and feel today the depths of The Great Depression. This work was so powerful that it helped to educate an entire nation about the plight of the American farmer.
While photographing for the FSA Evans also had several bodies of work published in Fortune magazine and this was to begin an association out of which would come his largest body of work. In 1941 when America was gearing up its war effort, Evans was asked by Fortune to photograph the many factories making arms and munitions in Bridgeport, CT. The Bridgeport series was stylistically reminiscent of his earlier street photographs made in New York, but like his deeply moving work done for the FSA Evans managed to show us the complex human face of the American worker. Evans stayed with Fortune until 1965 when he took a teaching position at Yale University. He continued to teach, photograph, exhibit and publish his work until his death in 1975.
[Contributed by Lee Gallery]
|Walker Evans |
|Walker Evans |
|National Gallery of Art (Washington D.C.) |
Has major collections of Harry Callahan, Walker Evans, Lee Friedlander, Robert Frank, Irving Penn and Alfred Stieglitz. There are a number of exhibitions on-line but to locate the holdings for an individual photographer you need to use the search options
The following books are useful starting points to obtain brief biographies but they are not substitutes for the monographs on individual photographers.
|• Auer, Michele & Michel 1985 Encyclopedie Internationale Des Photographes de 1839 a Nos Jours / Photographers Encylopaedia International 1839 to the present (Hermance, Editions Camera Obscura) 2 volumes [A classic reference work for biographical information on photographers.] |
• Beaton, Cecil & Buckland, Gail 1975 The Magic Eye: The Genius of Photography from 1839 to the Present Day (Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown & Company) p.166 [Useful short biographies with personal asides and one or more example images.]
• Capa, Cornell (ed.) 1984 The International Center of Photography: Encyclopedia of Photography (New York, Crown Publishers, Inc. - A Pound Press Book) p.178-179
• Evans, Martin Marix (Executive ed.) 1995 Contemporary Photographers [Third Edition] (St. James Press - An International Thomson Publishing Company) [Expensive reference work but highly informative.]
• Fernandez, Horacio (ed.) 2000 Fotografía Pública: Photography in Print 1919-1939 (Aldeasa) p.95-97 [This Spanish exhibition catalogue is one of the best sources for illustrations of photomontage and book design for the period between the two World Wars.]
• International Center of Photography 1999 Reflections in a Glass Eye: Works from the International Center of Photography Collection (New York: A Bulfinch Press Book) p.215 [Includes a well written short biography on Walker Evans with example plate(s) earlier in book.]
• Lenman, Robin (ed.) 2005 The Oxford Companion to the Photograph (Oxford: Oxford University Press) [Includes a short biography on Walker Evans.]
• Weaver, Mike (ed.) 1989 The Art of Photography 1839-1989 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press) p.456 [This exhibition catalogue is for the travelling exhibition that went to Houston, Canberra and London in 1989.]
• Witkin, Lee D. and Barbara London 1979 The Photograph Collector’s Guide (London: Secker and Warburg) p.135-136 [Long out of print but an essential reference work - the good news is that a new edition is in preparation.]
If there is an analysis of a single photograph or a useful self portrait I will highlight it here.
Photographic collections are a useful means of examining large numbers of photographs by a single photographer on-line.
|Library of Congress, Washington, USA |
Approximate number of records: 563
Note: A single record may contain more than one photograph.
|"The meaning of quality in photography‘s best pictures lies written in the language of vision. That language is learned by chance, not system."|
|"Whether he is an artist or not, the photographer is a joyous sensualist, for the simple reason that the eye traffics in feelings, not in thoughts."|