"Our overwhelming formal education deals in words, mathematical figures, and methods of rational thought, not in images. This may be a form of conspiracy that promises artificial blindness. It certainly is that to a learning child. It is this very blindness that photography attacks, blindness that is ignorance of real seeing and is perversion of seeing. It is reality that photography reaches toward."

      Walker Evans, from Photography, 1969

       Walker Evans, from Photography, 1969

Who is Walker Evans?

The son of an affluent advertising executive, Walker Evans III was likely expected to follow in the successful business path of his father. However, acting against expectations proved to be more Evans’ style. He attended preparatory school at Andover and later studied at Williams College (Szarkowski). Although his studies gave him a love for literature, his performance was less than exemplary at both institutions. He dropped out of Williams after just one year to move to New York, and later recounted, “I don’t remember studying anything” (Mellow 34). In 1926, he traveled to Paris, where he studied French art and literature and worked as an auditor at the Sorbonne (Szarkowski). It was his experience in France that gave him “a perspective and a technique,” he claimed that he went on to apply in his photographic work in American (Mellow 45).
Though his interest in photography was sparked at a young age, Evans first significant photographs were done in 1928. He had recently returned to the states, full of distaste and bitterness for the American establishment (Szarkowski). He was blatantly anti-American based on the economic corruption and materialism he believed had consumed the nation at the time (Guimond 144). Essentially as an answer to his employment struggles, he obtained a small pocket camera and launched into the world of photography (Szarkowski). In doing so, Walker Evans had unwittingly begun a photographic career that would famously illustrate his view of a disjointed and corrupt Depression-Era America, while at the same time developing the art of photojournalism.

Artistic Style and Early Career

As Walker Evans began to develop his technical skills with a camera, his ongoing passion for literature proved to be very influential in the establishment of his photographic style. He states in his book, Photography, that “photography seems to be the most literary of the graphic arts.” Evans studies in literature allowed him to be sensitive to his environment and better able to carry out unbiased social observation as a photographer. In particular, he gained the skill of emphasizing irony and contrast in a given scene (Rosenheim 9). His photography displays a playfulness and wit more common in verbal than visual art (Hill 26).

Evans kept a scrapbook, as it were, a book of clippings of pictures by other artists and also “non-art”—illustrations, signs, etc. that parallel his raw and pared-down style (Rosenheim 208). Evans did not seek to be a great artist but simply had “a profound desire to show, to preserve a trace,” according to Henri Cartier-Bresson, a contemporary photographer and influence of Evans (Cartier-Bresson 13). It was Cartier-Bresson who allowed a young Evans to “understand fully the immense potentialities of the hand camera at split-second speed,” as he recalled regarding his 1926 journey in Paris (Cartier-Bresson 23).

The early, independent photography of Evans focused on contemporary American life in his own environment: New York City. He started with architecture: the streets and bridges of New York. Evans photographed in an abstract style, contrasting neon signs of Broadway with shadows of train platforms (“Walker Evans”). His work was formed like a collection, a gathering of discontinuous and fragmented images and individuals (Cartier-Bresson 39). Perhaps in doing so, he was compelled to contemplate the confusing and disorganized state of the nation at the time. Evans would mindfully ignore picturesque images, instead paying close attention to building a collection of portraits and images of the bright signs on Broadway (Mellow 130).

Evans and the Farm Security Administration

In 1932, even before the existence of the Farm Security Administration, President Roosevelt promised to bring aid to “the forgotten man at the bottom end of the pyramid,” as he stated in a pre-election radio address. This forgotten man was virtually synonymous with the poor agricultural communities of the rural South (Baldwin 48). Later on in the Depression Era, the Farm Security Administration (originally the Resettlement Administration) Historical Unit was established. The Unit was composed of photographers hired to produce pictures that would help to illustrate and explain the unfortunate situation of the poor (Szarkowski). The Farm Security Administration (FSA) photography program was intended in another sense as a source of New Deal propaganda to persuade citizens to help the depicted poor by supporting New Deal programs (Guimond 101). In either case, the photos produced by the FSA photographers provided an accurate portrayal of the effects of the Depression on real American families (Guimond 109).

Evans was hired for the FSA on October 9th, 1935, to permanently join the staff of photographers and hold the title of Senior Information Specialist. According to Stryker, Evans’ job was to “illustrate factual and interpretive news releases and other informational material upon all problems, progress and activities of the Resettlement administration” (Mellow 269). Evans was specifically asked to portray “the relationship of the land to cultural decay” through his photographs (Mellow 287). Though he contributed over four-hundred photos, Evans was actually the least productive of all the FSA photographers based on numbers alone (Rosenheim 105).

Evans struggled to balance the political function of the organization with his own artistic goals. He wanted his photographs to be “literate, authoritative, transcendent” (Szarkowski). Evans was interested in capturing contrasts and juxtapositions in his work, to portray the motley combination of elements that formed current American culture (Guimond 134). Because of their different perspectives, Stryker and Evans often disagreed with each other. Stryker saw the photographers as working to fix the nation’s problems, while Evans saw his function as an artist to simply describe the life he saw (Szarkowski). It is likely, however, that Evans and Stryker could agree on one sentiment: Evan’s desire to reveal “a territory which had been previously kept in the shadow of the news item” (Cartier-Bresson 44).

Evans made another significant contribution to Depression-Era photography through his collaboration with James Agee for Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. For the project, Evans photographed farmers and sharecroppers in the south while Agee composed the descriptions of their daily lives. The portraits Evans produced for the book have become the definitive images of the Depression Era, namely those of the Burroughs Family from Hale County, Alabama (“Walker Evans”). Evans summarized the message of the book in his statement regarding the photographed families: “The writing they induced is, among other things, the reflection of one resolute, private rebellion” (Agee, Evans xii).

The American Vernacular

Evans’ photographic work for the FSA was not only an assignment but a personal journey. Through his images he reflects a harsh definition of America as fragmented and corrupt. As described by fellow FSA photographer Dorothea Lange, Evans himself and his photograph possessed a sort of “bitter edge,” perhaps a realization of the severe present state of the United States that may or may not improve (Guimond 121). Evans resented the materialistic, capitalistic condition of the nation and believed that big business was much too highly favored over the individual (Szarkowski). In response, his photography is filled with images of decay and destruction, visual metaphors for the corruption he was witnessing in the American establishment. As contemporary Henri Cartier-Bresson stated, “Evans was obsessed by dilapidation and social decline” (39). Often, he would display photos in pairs, using the second to portray a decayed version of the first image (Guimond 130). While traveling in South Carolina, Evans focused on creating images of churches and businesses against bleak landscapes to evoke the contrast between the miserable pleasant and memorable past (Mellow 303). In addition, Evans portrayed a divided America by photographing primarily individual portraits. The images of the disjointed individuals mirror the confused and fearful state of Americans during the Depression (Guimond 101). As Evans collected more and more portraits, he no doubt pondered the impossibility of creating a whole out of such discontinuous individuals (Cartier-Bresson 39).

The American “vernacular” was Evans’ claimed interested, as opposed to finished, polished subjects (Guimond 213). Evans’ photography uses an original documentary style, allowing Evans to address the impacts of the Depression like big government take over and loss of individual purchasing power and independence. Evans glorified anonymity and gave dignity and recognition to the forgotten man. Evans believed that “There are moment and moments in history, and we do not need military battles to provide the images of conflicts…But we do need more than the illustrations in the morning papers of our period” (Cartier-Bresson 13). He believed in the necessity of photography to convey reality to the common man and therefore sparked a major change in American photography (Cartier-Bresson 11).

Evans avoided convoluted and glamorous photography, choosing to address the most normal and commonplace scenes (Szarkowski). He declared that the photographer must learn to look beyond art museums and into the ordinary city streets to see his art (Evans). Evans believed that everyday, anonymous individuals were “the proper measure of man.” Indeed, he specifically photographed people and places normally unnoticed as an attack on established institutions of fame and power (Rosenheim 212). As farmers and other Americans lost their independence because of the Depression, Evans historical, documentary style gave dignity to his subjects and offered factual descriptions of their situations, giving the forgotten man a new voice (Guimond 135, 216). Evans’ iconic photo of Alli Mae Burroughs is exemplary on this front. The composition of the image is basic: just a face in front of bare wood boards; the expression on her face is questioning and frank. Even through pursed lips, Alli Mae speaks volumes as to both the harsh reality of the Depression and the quiet power of American individuality. In this image and others like it, Evans revolutionizes photography and gives rise to the art of photojournalism.

Post-Depression Evans

Evans work during the Great Depression would impact photography forever. Just after he finished work with the FSA, photojournalism dominated American photography, especially with the rise of World War II (Guimond 141). Evans himself continued to photograph in the same style he had employed with the FSA. His collection of plates in American Photographs focused on two subjects: American citizens and the houses they lived in. Evans sought to visually define what it meant to live in America through his documentary-style photographs (Cartier-Bresson 38). He produced another collection of photography, Many are Called that included photographs he had taken with a hidden camera on the New York subway, creating portraits of unsuspecting passengers. Again, Evans emphasized anonymity and discontinuity with his subjects (Cartier-Bresson 40). Whatever Evans’ intentions were with his photography, he never had any desire to right society’s wrongs through his photos. Even without political impact, Walker Evans’ photography had a profound impact on the art of photojournalism and an impact on society by bringing light to subjects previously hidden in the dark cloud of poverty and powerlessness.

Sources

Agee, James, and Walker Evans. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1941. Print.

Baldwin, Sidney. Poverty and Politics; the Rise and Decline of the Farm Security Administration. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1968. Print.

Cartier-Bresson, Henri, Walker Evans, and Agnes Sire. Photographing America: 1929 – 1947. London [u.a.: Thames & Hudson, 2009. Print

Evans, Walker. Photography. 1969. http://www.masters-of photography.com/E/evans/evans_articles2.html. Web. 26 Mar. 2011.

Guimond, James. American Photography and the American Dream. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1991. Print.

Hill, John T. Walker Evans: Lyric Documentary. Gottingen: Steidl, 2006. Print

Mellow, James R. Walker Evans. New York, NY: Basic, 1999. Print.

Rosenheim, Jeff L., Douglas Eklund, Alexis Schwarzenbach, Maria Morris. Hambourg, and Walker Evans. Unclassified - a Walker Evans Anthology: Selections from the Walker Evans Archive, Department of Photographs, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Zurich: Scalo, 2000. Print.

Szarkowski, John. "Introduction to "Walker Evans"" Masters of Photography. Museum of Modern Art, 1971. Web. 27 Mar. 2011. .

"Walker Evans." The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: Metmuseum.org. Web. .