Walker Evans ~ photographs of the Depression, James Agee & Many Are Called

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Today, November 3, is the birthday of Walker Evans who was born in 1903. Evans was an American photographer and photojournalist best known for his work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) documenting the effects of the Great Depression.  

   
      

       
       

Walker Evans self-portrait - 1936    

As with Dorothea Lange, many of his images have become symbols of the Great Depression such as the portrait of Allie Mae Burroughs for the FSA.     

           

Allie Mae Burroughs - 1936 

photo by Walker Evans

In addition to his portraits, his work included many studies of Depression era life in the 1930's primarily in the Southern United States.     

Roadside stand, Birmingham, Alabama - 1936

Much of Evans's work from the FSA period uses the large-format, 8x10-inch (200x250 mm) camera. He said that his goal as a photographer was to make pictures that are "literate, authoritative, transcendent". Many of his works are in the permanent collections of museums and have been the subject of retrospectives at such institutions as The Metropolitan Museum of Art or George Eastman House.               

In the late 30's he collaborated with writer James Agee on the famous book, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, an extraordinary portrait of rural sharecroppers in the Deep South. While working on the book, the two men created another lesser-known work: Many Are Called (link below). 

Many Are Called is a photographic study of people on the New York subway from 1938 to 1941. Using a camera hidden in his jacket and a cable release running down his sleeve, Evans snapped unsuspecting passengers while they traveled through the city. Evans said that these photographs were his “idea of what a portrait ought to be,” he wrote, “anonymous and documentary and a straightforward picture of mankind.” There is a five minute audio interview on NPR (link below).  

Many Are Called - New York City ca. 1938

photo by Walker Evans

       
Evans was born in St. Louis, Missouri to Jessie (née Crane) and Walker Evans, an advertising director. He spent his youth in Toledo, Chicago, and New York City. He studied French literature for a year at Williams College.       

After spending a year in Paris in 1926, he returned to the United States to join a literary and art crowd in New York City. John Cheever, Hart Crane, and Lincoln Kirstein were among his friends. He was a clerk for a stockbroker firm in Wall Street from 1927 to 1929.     
   
Evans took up photography in 1928 around the time he was living in Ossining, New York. His influences included Eugène Atget and August Sander. In 1930, he published three photographs (Brooklyn Bridge) in the poetry book The Bridge by Hart Crane.        

Hart Crane ~ The Bridge cover - 1930

photo by Walker Evans

In 1931, he made a photo series of Victorian houses in the Boston vicinity which was sponsored by Lincoln Kirstein.      

Boston Victorian houses - 1931

photo by Walker Evans

In May and June of 1933, Evans took photographs in Cuba for Lippincott, the publisher The Crime of Cuba (1933) by Carleton Beals. It was an account of the dictatorship of Gerardo Machado. His photographs documented street life, the presence of police, beggars and dockworkers in rags, and other waterfront scenes.

Cuba - 1933 

photo by Walker Evans

 

While in Cuba he became friends with Ernest Hemingway and helped him acquire photos from newspaper archives that documented some of the political violence described in To Have and Have Not (1937). Fearing his photographs might be deemed critical of the government and confiscated by Cuban authorities, Evans left 46 prints with Hemingway but had no difficulties when returning to the United States and 31 of his photos appeared in the Beals book. The cache of prints left with Hemingway was discovered in Havana in 2002 and shown at an exhibition in Key West and at the Getty Museum in 2011 (link below).
      
In 1973 and 1974, he shot a series with the then-new Polaroid SX-70 camera, after age and poor health had made it difficult for him to work with elaborate equipment.
      
      

Polaroid SX-70 prints

photos by Walker Evans

Walker Evans died of a stroke at his apartment in New Haven, Connecticut, on April 10, 1975. The last person he talked to was author and photographer, Hank O'Neal.  

In 1994, The Estate of Walker Evans turned over its holdings to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York City.   
      
      

          

Viewfinder links:         

          
James Agee      
Walker Evans                   

      

Net links:         

             

ASX Team ~ Many Are Called    
Getty Museum ~ A Revolutionary Project: Cuba from Walker Evans to Now  

The Iris ~ Walker Evans’s Havana, through an Architect’s Lens   
MOMA ~ Subway Portraits      
NPR ~ Many Are Called: Walker Evans' Subway Photos   
       
          
         
Styrous® ~ Sunday, November 3, 2019       
   

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