Walker Evans

Walker Evans (born November 3, 1903 in St. Louis, Missouri - April 10, 1975 in New Haven, CT) was an American photographer whose work during the Great Depression for the FSA (Farm Security Administration) was his most influential and became 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. At Williams College, he studied French Literature for one year, later dropped out and spent a year in Paris. He then returned to New York and associated with the art and literary crowd.

Career

While Evans worked for the FSA, he completed an assignment photographing three families in Alabama during the Great Depression. This became some of his most recognized work, with the families photographed becoming icons of the poverty and misery that symbolized the Great Depression Era. These photographs were published in the book "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men". Walker worked for the FSA until 1938. He also mentored photographer Helen Levitt in 1938 and 1939.

Walker also took photos for the book "The Crime of Cuba" during his time in Cuba in 1933. In 1945, he worked at Time Magazine as a staff writer, and later at Fortune Magazine as an editor through 1965. He was also a professor of photography at the Yale University School of Art for the Graphic Design faculty. Another remarkable body of work was his series of photos taken with a hidden camera in his coat in the New York Subway, published as "Many Are Called" in 1966.

Exhibitions and Estates

One of the first exhibitions entirely devoted to a single photographer was "Walker Evans: American Photographs" held at the Museum of Modern Art 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.