Walker Evans
Walker Evans in 1937
Born	November 3, 1903 (1903-11-03) St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.A.
Died	April 10, 1975 (aged 71) New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.A.

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Walker Evans (November 3, 1903 – April 10, 1975) was an American photographer best known for his work for the Farm Security Administration documenting the effects of the Great Depression. Events 644 - Umar ibn al-Khattab, the second Muslim Caliph, is killed by a Persian slave in Medina. Year 1903 ( MCMIII) was a Common year starting on Thursday (link will display calendar of the Gregorian calendar or a Common year starting Events 879 - Louis III becomes King of the Western Franks. 1407 - the lama Year 1975 ( MCMLXXV) was a Common year starting on Wednesday (link will display full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. The United States of America —commonly referred to as the Photography (fә'tɒgrәfi or fә'tɑːgrәfi (from Greek φωτο and γραφία is the process and Art of recording pictures by means of capturing Initially created as the Resettlement Administration in 1935 as part of the New Deal, the Farm Security Administration was an effort during the Depression to Much of Evans' work from the FSA period uses the large-format, 8x10-inch camera. He wrote 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^[1]

Biography

Born in Saint Louis, Missouri, Walker Evans was part of a well-to-do family. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is an art museum located on the eastern edge of Central Park, along what is known as Museum Mile in New York City, He graduated from Phillips Academy, in Andover, Mass. Phillips Academy (also known as Phillips Andover or PA or simply Andover) is a co-educational University preparatory school for boarding He studied literature for a year at Williams College before dropping out. Williams College is a highly selective private liberal arts college located in Williamstown, Massachusetts. After spending a year in Paris, he returned to the United States to join the edgy literary and art crowd in New York City. Paris (ˈpærɨs in English; in French) is the Capital of France and the country's largest city The City of New York John Cheever, Hart Crane, and Lincoln Kirstein were among his friends. John Cheever ( May 27, 1912 &ndash June 18, 1982) was an American Novelist and Short story Writer Harold Hart Crane ( July 21, 1899 – April 27, 1932) was an American Poet. Lincoln Edward Kirstein ( May 4, 1907 - January 5, 1996) was an American

Intimidated by the difficulty of writing great prose, Evans turned to photography in 1930. In 1933, he photographed in Cuba on assignment for the publisher of Carleton Beals' then-forthcoming book, The Crime of Cuba, photographing the revolt against the dictator Gerardo Machado. The Republic of Cuba (ˈkjuːbə or) consists of the island of Cuba (the largest and second-most populous island of the Greater Antilles) Isla de la Gerardo Machado y Morales ( September 28, 1871, Camajuani &ndash March 29, 1939, Miami Beach, Florida) In Cuba, Evans briefly knew Ernest Hemingway. Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21 1899 — July 2 1961 was an American novelist short-story writer, and Journalist.

Evans' photo of Allie Mae Burroughs, a symbol of the Great Depression

In 1935, Evans spent two months at first on a fixed-term photographic campaign for the Resettlement Administration (RA) in West Virginia and Pennsylvania. The Resettlement Administration (RA was a US federal agency that between April 1935 and December 1936 relocated struggling urban and rural families to communities planned by the West Virginia ( is a state in the Appalachian Upland South, and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States, bordered by The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania ( often colloquially referred to as PA (its abbreviation by natives and Northeasterners is a state located in the Northeastern From October on, he continued to do photographic work for the RA and later the Farm Security Administration (FSA), primarily in the Southern states. Initially created as the Resettlement Administration in 1935 as part of the New Deal, the Farm Security Administration was an effort during the Depression to

In the summer of 1936, while still working for the FSA, he and writer James Agee were sent by Fortune magazine on assignment to Hale County, Alabama, for a story the magazine subsequently opted not to run. James Rufus Agee (November 27 1909 &ndash May 16 1955 was an American Novelist, Journalist, Poet Fortune is a Global Business Magazine published by Time Inc's Fortune|Money Group Hale County is a County of the US state of Alabama. It is named in honor of Confederate Colonel Stephen F In 1941, Evans' photographs and Agee's text detailing the duo's stay with three white tenant families in southern Alabama during the Great Depression were published as the groundbreaking book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men is a book with text by American writer James Agee and photographs by American photographer Walker Evans first published in Its detailed account of three farming families paints a deeply moving portrait of rural poverty. Noting a similarity to the Beals' book, the critic Janet Malcolm, in her 1980 book Diana & Nikon: Essays on the Aesthetic of Photography, has pointed out the contradiction between a kind of anguished dissonance in Agee's prose and the quiet, magisterial beauty of Evans' photographs of sharecroppers. Janet Malcolm (born 1934 is an American writer and journalist on staff at The New Yorker magazine Sharecropping is a system of agriculture or agricultural production in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a share of the crop produced on the land (e

The three families headed by Bud Fields, Floyd Burroughs and Frank Tingle, lived in the Hale County town of Akron, Alabama, and the owners of the land on which the families worked told them that Evans and Agee were "Soviet agents," although Allie Mae Burroughs, Floyd's wife, recalled during later interviews her discounting that information. Akron is a town in Hale County, Alabama, United States. At the 2000 census the population was 521 Evan's photographs of the families made them icons of Depression-Era misery and poverty. Many years later, some of the subjects' descendants maintained that the family was presented in a falsely unflattering light by Evans' photographs. In September 2005, Fortune revisited Hale County and the descendants of the three families for its 75th anniversary issue. ^[2]

Evans continued to work for the FSA until 1938. Initially created as the Resettlement Administration in 1935 as part of the New Deal, the Farm Security Administration was an effort during the Depression to Year 1938 ( MCMXXXVIII) was a Common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. That year, an exhibition, Walker Evans: American Photographs, was held at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, USA, on 53rd Street between Fifth This was the first exhibition in this museum devoted to the work of a single photographer. The catalogue included an accompanying essay by Lincoln Kirstein, whom Evans had befriended in his early days in New York. Lincoln Edward Kirstein ( May 4, 1907 - January 5, 1996) was an American

In 1938, Evans also took his first photographs in the New York subway with a camera hidden in his coat. These would be collected in book form in 1966 under the title Many are Called. Year 1966 ( MCMLXVI) was a Common year starting on Saturday (link will display full calendar of the 1966 Gregorian calendar. In 1938 and 1939, Evans worked with and mentored Helen Levitt. Helen Levitt (born 1913-08-31, Brooklyn New York) is an American photographer

It has been suggested that Evans provided the inspiration behind Andy Warhol's photo booth portraits, following the publication of 'Subway Portraits' in Harper's Bazaar in March 1962. For the song by David Bowie, see Andy Warhol (song. Andrew Warhola (August 6 1928 &ndash February 22 1987 known as Andy Warhol Photo Booth is a small Software application by Apple Inc for Mac OS X for taking photos and (since Mac OS X v10 Harper's Bazaar is a well-known American Fashion Magazine, first published in 1867 Evans first experimented with photo-booth self-portraits in New York in 1929, using them to detach his own artistic presence from his imagery, craving for the true objectivity of what he later described as the "ultimate purity" of the "record method. "

Evans, like such other photographers as Henri Cartier-Bresson, rarely spent time in the darkroom making prints from his own negatives. Henri Cartier-Bresson ( August 22, 1908 &ndash August 3 2004) was a French He only very loosely supervised the making of prints of most of his photographs, sometimes only attaching handwritten notes to negatives with instructions on some aspect of the printing procedure.

Evans was a passionate reader and writer, and in 1945 became a staff writer at Time magazine. Time (trademarked in capitals as TIME) is a weekly American Newsmagazine, similar to Newsweek and Shortly afterward he became an editor at Fortune magazine through 1965. That year, he became a professor of photography on the faculty for Graphic Design at the Yale University School of Art (formerly the Yale School of Art and Architecture). The Yale School of Art is one of twelve constituent schools of Yale University.

In 1971, the Museum of Modern Art staged a further exhibition of his work entitled simply Walker Evans.

Evans died in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1975. In 2000, he was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame. The St Louis Walk of Fame honors well-known people from St Louis Missouri who made contributions to Culture of the United States.

See also

• Photojournalism

Footnotes

References

• Walker Evans Exhibition: "Carbon and Silver"
• "Furniture Store Sign, Birmingham, Alabama"
• Walker Evans Entry on the St. Louis Walk of Fame
• Walker Evans exhibition in the argus fotokunst art gallery in Berlin.
• Walker Evans or is It? Digital Reproductions

Further reading

• Rathbone, Belinda (2002). Walker Evans: A Biography. Thomas Allen & Son Ltd. . ISBN 0-618-05672-6.  
• Storey, Isabelle (2007). Walker's Way: My Years With Walker Evans. powerHouse Books. ISBN 978-1-57687-362-5.  
• Hambourg, Maria Morris; Jeff Rosenheim, Douglas Eklund, Mia Fineman (2000). Walker Evans. Princeton University Press / The Metropolitan Museum of Art. ISBN 0-691-11965-1.  
• Rosenheim, Jeff; Douglas Eklund. in Alexis Scwarzenbach: Unclassified: A Walker Evans Anthology, Maria Morris Hambourg, Scalo / The Metropolitan Museum of Art. ISBN 3-908247-21-7.  
• Leicht, Michael (2006). Wie Katie Tingle sich weigerte, ordentlich zu posieren und Walker Evans darüber nicht grollte. transcript Verlag, Bielefeld. ISBN 3-89942-436-0.  

External links

• A biography of the artist Walker Evans from the J. Paul Getty Museum
• Tod Papageorge on Walker Evans and Robert Frank