Walker Evans (born November 3, 1903 in St. Louis, Missouri – April 10, 1975 in New Haven, CT) Walker Evans work during the Great Depression for the FSA (Farm Security Administration) was his best work yet and was very instrumental in documenting that era.
Style American Photographer
Beginnings Walker Evans was born to a well off family. Before taking up photography in 1928, he graduated from Phillips Academy in Massachusetts. In Williams College he studied French Literature for one year, dropped out and spent a year in Paris. He then returned to New York and hung out with the art and literary crowd.
Career While Evans worked for the FSA he also worked on an assignment photographing three families in Alabama during the Great Depression. This ended up being some of his best work and was so well known for it that even the families photographed became icons of the poverty and misery and symbols of the Great Depression Era. These photographs were published in the book “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men”. Walker worked for the FSA until 1938. Walker worked with and mentored Helen Levitt in 1938 and 1939.
Walker also took photos for the book “The Crime of Cuba” shot in Cuba in 1933. In 1945 Walker worked at Time Magazine as a staff writer, then at Fortune Magazine he was an editor through 1965. He was also a professor of photography at the Yale University School of Art for the Graphic Design faculty. Another one of his amazing works was his photos taken with a hidden camera in his coat in the New York Subway and it was published “Many Are Called” in 1966.
Exhibitions and Estates One of the first exhibitions totally devoted to one single photographer was the “Walker Evans: American Photographers” held at the Museum of Modern at in New York in 1971. The sole copyright holder for Walker Evans work is the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
Honors Walker Evans was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame in 2000.
http://photography-now.net/walker_evans/
http://www.metmuseum.org/special/se_event.asp?OccurrenceId={26B7F4BD-AE17-11D3-936C-00902786BF44}
Comments
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No one captures the hardships of the great depression the way Walker Evans does. The pain and struggle are so evident in his subjects. I purchased his book on this subject and it’s a very important part of my library.