Walker Evans: 12 works

'Born in 1903 in St. Louis, Missouri, Walker Evans was raised in Chicago and New York.'

'Walker Evans photographed this couple from behind as they held each other and looked out over the water toward the famous central tower at Luna Park, one of the resort's amusement parks.'

'Engrossed in thought, she appears to be entirely unaware of Walker Evans's presence.'

'With an unerring eye for details and signs, Walker Evans focused on this charming advertisement painted on the side of a lunch wagon.'

'Walker Evans in turn regarded them less as individuals than as representatives of the human condition.'

'Both men look directly at Walker Evans in a rare posed portrait from Evans's body of work.'

'Walker Evans's closely cropped photograph isolates the business on the corner, transforming it into a curious box.'

'Walker Evans declared that he was not interested in "educated architecture," but in vernacular styles such as those seen in this image of an industrial town.'

'Walker Evans's principal subject was the vernacular--roadside stands, cheap cafés, advertisements, simple bedrooms, and small-town streets.'

'After returning home to New York City in 1927, he soon began to explore the medium of photography and the aesthetics of modernism, though the tide of social realism provoked his most innovative and poetic documentary work. Evans accepted a government position with the Resettlement Administration (later called the Farm Security Administration), alongside other photographers such as Dorothea Lange, to photograph the conditions of poverty and the effects of social welfare programs across Depression- era America.'

'Evans made this photograph while on assignment with writer James Agee to investigate the plight of Southern tenant farmers in rural Alabama-a project that culminated in their book Let Us No= w Praise Famous Men (1941).'

'His direct yet subtle and sensual way of photographing people and their everyday surroundings was as admired by his contemporaries as by the generations of artists to follow. Years earlier, in 1926, the young Evans had abandoned his study of French literature at Williams College in Massachusetts to spend a year in Paris, where he studied French and explored his aptitude for writing, both fiction and nonfiction.'