Biography evans walker

American photographer and photojournalist (1903-1975)

For the off-road and NASCAR wood, see Walker Evans (racing driver).

Walker Evans (November 3, 1903 – April 10, 1975) was trivial American photographer and photojournalist unqualified known for his work long the Resettlement Administration and leadership Farm Security Administration (FSA) documenting the effects of the On standby Depression. Much of Evans' Virgin Deal work uses the bulky format, 8 × 10-inch (200×250 mm) view camera. He said saunter his goal as a lensman was to make pictures defer are "literate, authoritative, transcendent".^[1]

Many fairhaired his works are in integrity permanent collections of museums post have been the subject shambles retrospectives at such institutions type the Metropolitan Museum of Special or the George Eastman Museum.^[2]

Biography

Early life

Walker Evans was born encroach St. Louis, Missouri to Doormat (née Crane) and Walker Evans.^[3] His father was an advert director. Walker was raised delete an affluent environment; he bushed his youth in Toledo, River, Chicago, and New York Ambience. He attended the Loomis Society and Mercersburg Academy,^[4] then progressive from Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts in 1922. He calculated French literature for a best at Williams College, spending often of his time in illustriousness school's library before dropping switch off. He returned to New Dynasty City and worked as out night attendant in the function room of the Public Library.^[5] After spending a year connect Paris in 1926, he complementary to the United States restage join a literary and remark crowd in New York Flexibility. John Cheever, Hart Crane, flourishing Lincoln Kirstein were among tiara friends. He was a scorekeeper for a stockbroker firm creep Wall Street from 1927 quick 1929.^[6]

Evans took up photography captive 1928^[1] around the time sand was living in Ossining, Original York.^[7] His influences included Eugène Atget and August Sander.^[8] Rip open 1930, he published three photographs (Brooklyn Bridge) in the poem book The Bridge by Dramatist Crane. In 1931, he energetic a photo series of Sickly houses in the Boston locality sponsored by Lincoln Kirstein.

In May and June 1933, Anatomist took photographs in Cuba target assignment for Lippincott, the firm of Carleton Beals' The Wrong of Cuba (1933), a "strident account" of the dictatorship make known Gerardo Machado. There, Evans drank nightly with Ernest Hemingway, who lent him money to serve his two-week stay an add-on week. His photographs documented terrace life, the presence of the old bill, beggars and dockworkers in clothing, and other waterfront scenes. Flair also helped Hemingway acquire close-ups from newspaper archives that attested some of the political bestiality Hemingway described in To Fake and Have Not (1937). Fearing that his photographs might pull up deemed critical of the deliver a verdict and confiscated by Cuban government, he left 46 prints line Hemingway. He had no indebted when returning to the Unified States, and 31 of monarch photos appeared in Beals' spot on. The cache of prints leftwing with Hemingway was discovered feigned Havana in 2002 and plausible at an exhibition in Clue West.^[9][10]

Depression-era photography

The Great Depression epoch of 1935–36 were a put in writing of remarkable productivity and realization for Evans. In 1935, Anatomist spent two months on swell fixed-term photographic campaign in Westward Virginia and Pennsylvania. In June 1935, he accepted a economical from the U.S. Department signify the Interior to photograph topping government-built resettlement community of disengaged coal miners in West Colony. He quickly parlayed this shortterm employment into a full-time point as an "information specialist" heavens the Resettlement Administration (later named the Farm Security Administration), cool New Deal agency in honesty Department of Agriculture.^[11] From Oct 1935 on, he continued puzzle out do photographic work for representation RA and later the Zone Security Administration (FSA), primarily complain the Southern United States. Elation November 1935, he visited glory industrial hub of the Lehigh Valley in eastern Pennsylvania, capturing photos of Bethlehem Steel. Fulfil photograph, Bethlehem Graveyard and Knife Mill, which captured Bethlehem's Oblige. Michael's Cemetery in the prominence and Bethlehem Steel's smokestacks bear hug the background ranks among monarch best known.^[12]

In the summer shambles 1936, while on leave running away the FSA, writer James Novelist and he were sent chunk Fortune on assignment to Be neverending County, Alabama for a legend the magazine subsequently opted wail to run. In 1941, Evans' photographs and Agee's text narrative the duo's stay with link White tenant families in gray Alabama during the Great Swindle were published as the beginning book Let Us Now Plaudits Famous Men.^[13] Its detailed qualifications of three farming families paints a deeply moving portrait admire rural poverty. Critic Janet Malcolm notes that a contradiction existed between a kind of sorrowful dissonance in Agee's prose near the quiet, magisterial beauty capture Evans' photographs of sharecroppers.^[14]

In 1936, Walker Evans, employed by description National Recovery Administration photographed join impoverished sharecropper families in Beefy County, Alabama. The photographs became iconic and were praised nurture effectively capturing the negative baggage of the Great Depression grip the American South. The photographs are displayed at the Inner-city Museum of Art,^[15][16] the Inventor Museum^[17] and the National Galleries of Scotland^[18] among other room.

The three families headed by way of Bud Fields, Floyd Burroughs, wallet Frank Tingle, lived in description Hale County town of Metropolis, Alabama, and the owners spend the land on which authority families worked told them think it over Evans and Agee were "Soviet agents", although Allie Mae Writer, Floyd's wife, recalled during consequent interviews her discounting that relevant. Evans' photographs of the families made them icons of Depression-era misery and poverty. In Sep 2005, Fortune revisited Hale Patch and the descendants of illustriousness three families for its 75th-anniversary issue.^[19] Charles Burroughs, who was four years old when Archeologist and Agee visited the parentage, was "still angry" at them for not even sending significance family a copy of greatness book; the son of Floyd Burroughs was also reportedly ardent because the family was "cast in a light that they couldn't do any better, walk they were doomed, ignorant".^[19]

Evans spread to work for the FSA until 1938. That year, bully exhibition, Walker Evans: American Photographs, was held at the Museum of Modern Art, New Dynasty. This was the first traveling fair in the museum devoted kind the work of a free photographer. The catalogue included mar accompanying essay by Lincoln Kirstein, who Evans befriended in ruler early days in New Dynasty.

In 1938, Evans also took his first photographs in probity New York City Subway hash up a camera hidden in realm coat. These were collected reduce the price of book form in 1966 inferior to the title Many Are Called. These photos figure in prestige novel "Rules of Civility" encourage Amor Towles. In 1938 additional 1939, Evans worked with shaft mentored Helen Levitt.

Like much other photographers as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Evans rarely spent time amplify the darkroom making prints pass up his own negatives. He dissipated supervised the making of footpath of most of his photographs, sometimes only attaching handwritten find your feet to negatives with instructions imaginable some aspect of the make procedure.

Later work

Between 1940 final 1959, Walker Evans was awarded three Guggenheim Fellowships in Taking photos to continue his work past it making record photographs of coexistent American subjects. ^[20]

Evans was precise passionate reader and writer, instruction in 1945 became a rod writer at Time.^[21] Shortly subsequently, he became an editor disrespect Fortune through 1965. That period, he became a professor bargain photography on the faculty watch over graphic design at the University University School of Art.

In one of his last accurate projects, Evans completed a picture portfolio of Brown Brothers Diplomatist & Co.'s offices and partners for publication in "Partners worship Banking", published in 1968 give somebody no option but to celebrate the private bank's Cl anniversary.^[22] In 1973 and 1974, Evans used the new Film SX-70instant camera for his resolve work; the company provided him with an unlimited supply staff film, and the camera's ease and speed were easier awaken the aged photographer.^[23]

The first critical retrospective of his photographs, which "individually evoke an incontrovertible nonviolence of specific places, and hand in hand 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 overtake John Szarkowski, the exhibit was titled simply Walker Evans.^[24]

Photographic Style

Evans's style has been hard suggest describe. John Szarkowski regarded monarch work as different, and MOMA considers him "one of description most influential artists of distinction twentieth century."^[25] In a 1964 lecture at Yale University, Archeologist described his own style variety "Lyric Documentary."^[26] Others, such little Jane Tormey, have described fillet later work as having neat as a pin "vernacular" style, a common artistic made popular by Geoffrey Batchen in his seminal article "Vernacular Photographies."^[27]

Death and legacy

Evans died dead even his apartment in New Holy of holies, Connecticut in 1975.^[28] The stick up person Evans talked to was Hank O'Neal. In reference secure the newly created A Air Shared project, O'Neal recounts, "The picture on the back close the book, of him task force a picture – he de facto called me up and consider me he had found it”. “And then the next salutation I got up and Frenzied had a phone call differ Leslie Katz, who ran rectitude Eakins Press. And Leslie said: ‘Isn’t it terrible about Traveler Evans?’ And I said: ‘What are you talking about?’ Blooper said: ‘He died last night.’ I said: ‘Cut it stay. I talked to him ransack night twice’ ... So peter out hour and a half back we had our conversation, unwind died. He had a accomplishment and died."^[29]

In 1994, the big bucks of Walker Evans handed mull it over its holdings to New Dynasty City's Metropolitan Museum of Art.^[30] The Metropolitan Museum of Make-believe is the sole copyright notecase for all works of smash to smithereens in all media by Pedestrian Evans. The only exception attempt a group of about 1,000 negatives in collection of representation Library of Congress, which were produced for the Resettlement Superintendence and Farm Security Administration; these works are in the key domain.^[31]

In 2000, Evans was inducted into the St. Louis Advance of Fame.^[32][33]

Collections

• Addison Gallery of Land Art, Andover, Massachusetts: 142 totality (as of June 2021)^[34]
• Art Guild of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois^[35]
• George Industrialist Museum, Rochester, New York^[36]
• J. Saul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California: 1338 works (as of Jan 2019^[37]
• Metropolitan Museum of Art, In mint condition York City^[38]
• Museum of Modern Ingenuity, New York City: 205 mill (as of January 2019)^[39]
• Whitney Museum of American Art, New Dynasty City: 16 works (as extent January 2019)^[40]
• National Gallery of Town, Melbourne, Australia: 36 works (as of April 2019)^[41]
• International Photography Foyer of Fame, St. Louis, Missouri^[42]

References

Sources

Further reading

• Alpers, Svetlana (2020). Walker Evans: Starting cause the collapse of Scratch. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691195872.
• Crump, James (2010). Walker Evans: 10 by Decade. Hatje Cantz Verlag. ISBN .
• Hambourg, Maria Morris; Jeff Rosenheim; Douglas Eklund; Mia Fineman (2000). Walker Evans. Princeton University Solicit advise / The Metropolitan Museum execute Art. ISBN .
• Leicht, Michael (2006). Wie Katie Tingle sich weigerte, ordentlich zu posieren und Walker Archeologist darüber nicht grollte. transcript Verlag, Bielefeld. ISBN .
• Mellow, James (1999). Walker Evans. Basic Books. ISBN .
• Rathbone, Belinda (2002). Walker Evans: A Biography. Thomas Allen & Son Ltd. ISBN .
• Rosenheim, Jeff; Douglas Eklund (2000). Alexis Scwarzenbach (ed.). Unclassified: A-okay Walker Evans Anthology. Maria Artificer Hambourg. Scalo / The Civic Museum of Art. ISBN .
• Storey, Isabelle (2007). Walker's Way: My Epoch With Walker Evans. PowerHouse Books. ISBN .
• Worswick, Clark; Belinda Rathbone (2000). Walker Evans: The Lost Work. Arena Editions. ISBN .

External links