Roadside Stand, vicinity Birmingham, Alabama

Born in 1903 in St. Louis, Missouri, Walker Evans was raised in Chicago and New York. While studying at Williams College, he became interested in literature. His desire to become a writer took him to Paris, where he audited courses at the Sorbonne. During this time, and following his return to the United States, he developed a strong interest in photography. In 1928 he acquired his first camera. In the early 1930s Evans took on a project to photograph New England Victorian homes developing his documentary style and starting to use a large format camera.

His work for the Farm Security Administration, produced between 1935 and 1937, documented the effects of the depression on American farmers. During this time he took a short hiatus to collaborate on a book with writer James Agee. Three weeks spent photographing farm families in Hale County, Alabama resulted in what was to become his most known work, the book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. In 1938 the Museum of Modern Art organized a major solo exhibition of Evans' work, the first exhibition of a photographer to be shown at MoMA.

In the following years Evans was awarded three Guggenheim Fellowships (1940, 1941 and 1959), worked for Time magazine and was on the staff of Fortune magazine. His later work includes a series of subway portraits taken with a hidden camera in order to capture the objective essence of the moment. In 1965 he took a teaching position at Yale where he stayed until his death in 1975.