WALKER EVANS

simple secrets

Whitney Museum of American Art at Champion

ANGELA KRAMER MURPHY

THE PHOTOGRAPHY OF WALKER EVANS

n 1926, a twenty-three-year-old Walker Evans
sailed for Paris with
J

subjects intuitively,

and found a

sort of visual poetry in

vague plans
to

to

become

the decaying facade of an old building.

In

a writer

and a strong desire

escape the

many

ways, Evans' emerging aesthetic was a

suffocating pragmatism of his Midwestern childhood.

reaction against the pervasive influence of photographer

He spent
at the

the next year attending literature lectures

city's

Alfred Stieglitz. To Evans, the work of Stieglitz and his

followers

Sorbonne and frequenting the

celebrated

seemed

overly romantic

and personal. The

cafes and bookstores, where he observed, but dared

young photographer rejected

a

their "artiness" in favor of

not approach, literary luminaries such as

James

Joyce.

more

reserved, objective approach. Evans later

his aesthetic

While

in

France, he also

made
in

a few

amateur but

explained that

was shaped not by other

inventive snapshots with a vest-pocket camera.

When

photographers, but by writers, especially Gustave Flaubert:

"Flaubert's

he returned to
to

New

York

1927, Evans continued

method

think

incorporated almost
in

experiment with photography and decided, almost

unconsciously, but

anyway used

two ways:

his realism

arbitrarily, to
In Paris,

become

a photographer.

and naturalism both, and

his objectivity of

treatment;
1

Evans had remained on the fringes

the non-appearance of author, the non-subjectivity."

In

of the art world; in of writers

New

York, he

soon joined a

circle

the early 1930s, Evans found regular employment

and painters that included Hart Crane,

In

as a photographer, traveling to Tahiti on a private yacht

a promising young poet.

1930, Crane selected three

and

to

Cuba
In

to illustrate Carleton Beals'

The Crime

Evans photographs to
Bridge."

illustrate his epic

poem "The

of Cuba.
for

1935, he photographed African sculpture

of

The photographs depict the Brooklyn Bridge

The Museum
Orleans
in

Modern

Art,

New

York,

and traveled

to

from below and at odd, oblique angles; these early

works reveal the influence of European avant-garde
photography, with
its

New

search of antebellum architecture.

(later

That summer, the Resettlement Administration

interest in

double exposures

renamed the Farm

to

Security Administration) hired Evans

and disorienting perspectives.

By 1931, Evans had also befriended Lincoln
Kirstein, the energetic
literary journal
in

document the
As a branch

plight of the rural poor during the

Depression.
of the of the federal

and enterprising publisher

Kirstein enlisted

government, the FSA

Hound & Horn.

in

Evans

sought to validate the ambitious social programs

of Franklin D. Roosevelt's

an ambitious project to document neglected

New

Deal. Evans had

little

Victorian architecture

New

York and

New

England.

interest in

government propaganda, but he was

Although the proposed book was never realized, the

project helped establish Evans' style. In contrast to
his

intrigued by the opportunity to record the lives of ordinary

Americans. Over the next two years, he traveled

images

of the Brooklyn Bridge, these architectural

clear.

photographs were straightforward and

Evans

worked methodically, often returning

times to capture the right
light.

to a site several

Yet he chose his

through Ohio, Pennsylvania, and the South, creating

parading the nakedness, disadvantage and humiliation

of these lives before

memorable
main

pictures of blighted farmland

and shabby

another group of

human

beings...."

streets. In the

hands

of another photographer,

Nevertheless, Evans and

eventually ended up
in

Agee headed south and

an isolated group of

these images might have

seemed sentimental

or even

Hale County, Alabama, where

living in

pathetic, but Evans preserved the quiet dignity of his

they met three families

subjects

and avoided obvious ploys

to elicit pity.

He was

dilapidated houses. During a month-long stay, Evans

scrupulously faithful to the truth and was appalled

photographed the

families, their

homes, and the

his

sur-

when FSA colleagues were accused

of fabricating scenes.

rounding towns, while Agee recorded

their daily habits

impressions of
of

and made detailed inventories

n the
of

summer

of 1936, Evans requested a leave

in

their

meager

possessions.

absence from the FSA

order to accompafor

The

draft of the article

Agee

eventually submitted
for

ny writer James

Agee on an assignment

to Fortune

was deemed inappropriate

mainstream

Fortune magazine to investigate the

lives of "typical"

publication. After years of rewriting, Agee's text

Southern tenant farmers. Both

men had

misgivings
it

was published

in

1941 as a book with a separate section

about the assignment, and Agee found

"to pry intimately into the lives of

distasteful

an undefended and
beings, an

appallingly

damaged group

of

human

ignorant and helpless rural family, for the purpose of

Street Scene, New Orleans, 1936

devoted to Evans' photographs. Yet by then America

produced magazines of

its

day. Evans helped establish

was on the eve

of

World War
like

II,

and Let Us

Now

Praise

a photographic identity that set Fortune apart from

Famous Men seemed

of a time the nation

another dreary reminder

just as

other magazines, which often published staged, sensationalized images.

would

soon forget. The book

was eventually recognized as a

classic
in

example

of
it

While at Fortune, Evans completed

his

share of

Depression-era reportage, although

many ways

tedious assignments, such as taking portraits of leading

industrialists.

defied the underlying assumption of the genre that

literature could effect social

However, he also enjoyed the creative

change.

Similarly, Evans'

latitude to pursue projects that interested him. In

photographs are often called "documentary," a term

that troubled him:
sophisticated

1947, for example, the magazine sent him to Chicago

"Documentary? That's a very

.

"on a felicitous mission to follow, on behalf of Fortune,

and misleading word.. The term should be

style.

where

his

sharp eye led him." 7 Evans remained at 1965, when he accepted a teaching posi-

documentary

An example
use,

of a literal

document
3

Fortune

until

would be a police photograph

see, a
In

of a

murder scene. You

art
is

tion at Yale University.

document has
1938, The

whereas
of

really useless."

Throughout

his career,

Evans was drawn to the

Museum

Modern

Art organized

incidental art of deteriorating billboards

lettered signs.

and hand-

a retrospective of Evans' work,

entitled

accompanied by a book
Critical reaction

When

he acquired Polaroid's new SX-70

American Photographs.

was

camera

in

1973, he began taking instant color photo-

mixed. The Washington Post called the show "a parade

of dreary, drab,

graphs of words he found scrawled on street posts

and depressing scenes." Yet William

"It is

and

storefronts.

He

also collected actual signs, discarded

artifacts of

Carlos Williams wrote,

lifted

ourselves

we

see, ourselves

rubbish,

and other

American

life.

He

from a parochial

setting.

We

see what

we

had always been a collector

also a collector of objects.

of images;

now he was

have not heretofore realized, ourselves made worthy

in

our anonymity." 5
Evans' fascination with the
lives of

When
anonymous
executed
of
series of

Evans died

in

1975, he

left

behind a record

an America that had long since vanished. Yet

in

Americans inspired a

subway

portraits

by finding art

the ordinary, transcendence

in

the

between 1938 and 1941 with a camera Evans

concealed
in his

cleverly

mundane, he
American
life.

forever
In his

changed our perceptions

1938 introduction
to

of

coat. Despite his reluctance to intrude

of strangers he later called himself
6

American

upon the privacy

Photographs, Lincoln Kirstein claimed that Evans

"a penitent spy and an apologetic voyeur."

the subway

Evans rode

"evoked for future historians.

to our

.a

powerful

monument

for hours, creating haunting portraits of

in

moment." 8 Looking
if

at these

images today, we
it

random commuters caught

During World War
as a film and art
critic
II,

unguarded moments.

wonder
really

Evans managed to capture America as

if

Time magazine hired Evans

on
military

was, or

our vision of the past has simply been

to replace writers

altered by his photography.

leave. After the war, he

became

a staff photographer

and
its

special photographic editor at Fortune. With

oversize format

and sophisticated

printing

techniques, Fortune was one of the most lavishly

Notes
1.

Leslie Katz, "interview with

in
p.

Walker Evans," Art

(March-April 1971),

America, 59

84

2.

James Agee and Walker Evans,

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941; ed Boston: Houghton Mifflin

Company, 1988),

3.

Katz, 'Interview with Walker

p.

Evans,

87.

Quoted m Belinda Rathbone, Walker Evans: A Biography (Boston

p.

and New York: Houghton Mifflin

Company, 1995),

164.

5.

William Carlos Williams, quoted

in

John Szarkowski, introduction to

Walker Evans (New York: The Museum
of

Modern Art, 1971

i,

p.

16

6.

Walker Evans, quoted

in

Rathbone, Walker Evans,

p.

266.

7.

FYI (Time Inc.'s m-house

:,

newsletter

quoted
p.

in

Rathbone,

Walker Evans,

200.

8. Lincoln Kirstein,

"Photographs
in

of

America^ Walker Evans,'

Walker

Evans: American Photographs (1938:

ed.

New

York: The
p-

Museum

of

Modern

Art, 1988),

193

Alabama Country Fireplace 1936

All

Unless otherwise indicated,

works are from the Collection of Marian and Benjamin A. Hill. all are gelatin silver prints. Dimensions are followed by centimeters; height precedes width.

in

inches,

WORKS
Self-Portrait, Juan Les Pins,
France, 1927
4'/2

IN

THE EXHIBITION
Secondhand Shop Window, 1930
4'/2x6'/2(11.4x 16.5)
Tahiti, 1932
6'A x 7/2 (15.9 x 19.1)
x 3
(1
1

.4 x 7.6)

View of Ossining, New York 1930

Building Facade,

Bread Line, Havana, 1933

New York

1928

4%

x 7/2 (12.1 x 19.1)

6% x8 /s
3

(16.8x21.3)
1933

2 3/8 x VA (6

x 3.8)

Wood Shingles 1930

Grate, Bronx
2'A x

Coal Loader, Havana

6/2 x

1928

6 3/sx4'/2 (16.2

x 11.4)

4%

(16.5 x 11.7)

1%

(6.4 x 3.5)

Circus Signboard

c.

1930

Courtyard, Havana, 1933

6 x 77b (15.2 x 20)

Mannequin, New York

8 x
5'/s

1928

8 5/8 x 6 3/s (21.9 x 16.2)

(20.3 x 13)

Clothes Line and Smoke Stacks,

Cranes and Windows, New York c. 1928-29

2'A x
5
l

New
878
x

York,

c.

1930
x 22.9)

47s x

Cuban Sugar Worker 672 (12.4 x 16.5)

933

9 (20.6

/e

(6.4 x 4.1)

General Store, Cuba, 1933

Wash Day, New

Brooklyn Bridge Composition,

York,

c.

1930

57s x

7%

(14.9 x 19.4)

New

7% x 4%
Window

(18.7 x 12.4) of a Shingled House, c

1

York 1929

2%

x 4 (6 x 10.2)

1930

Breakfast Room, Belle Grove Plantation, White Castle, Louisiana,

1935, printed
c.

6 3/s x 4/2 (16.2 x

1.4)

1970

Brooklyn Bridge,
printed

New York

1929,

778x

974 (18.1 x 23.5)

1994 by Jon Goodman, from the

portfolio

The Brooklyn Bridge

the original film

Gingerbread House, Dedham, Massachusetts, c 1930-31

3 37 x

Figure, Surmounting a Calabash, Urua

Modern photogravure from

negative,

5%

(9.5 x 13.7)

Belgian Congo
9 x

935

9%

5%

(25.1 x 14.9)

7%

(22.9 x 18.7)

Jigsaw House, Ocean City,

Building with Metal Gate, probably

New Jersey,

93

Five Fly Whisks with Carved Handles,

Brooklyn
2'A x
5
l

1929

5/2 x 7 (14 x 17.8)

Baule, Ivory Coast, 1935

/8 (6.4 x 4.1)

978
Main Street, Saratoga Springs,

x 77s

(23.2 x 18.1)

Delancey Street, New York, 1929

2'/2 x
5
l

New

York, 1931, printed

c.

1970

The Henry McAlpin House

1935

The

/e

(6.4 x 4.1)

8/2 x 6/2 (21.6 x 16.5)

Hermitage") near Savannah, Georgia

772 x 87s (19.1 x 22.5)

East River, New York, 1929

2'/2 x I/2

Mirror, Saratoga Springs,

(6.4 x 3.8)

New York

931

7 3/4 x 6 (19.7 x 15.2)

Forty-Second Street, New York, 1929 67 x 97 (15.9 x 23.5)

Hart Crane, Brooklyn, New York 1929
3 3/s x 3 (8.6 x 7.6)

Jane Ninas, Belle Grove Plantation, White Castle, Louisiana 1935

Roxbury Water Tower, Massachusetts

1931
6'A x

4%
7%

x 3 3/s

(1 1.1

x 8.6)

3%

(15.9x8.6)

Louisiana Factory and Houses, 1935

x

127

(18.7 x 31.1)

Moving Truck and Bureau Mirror,

Paul Grotz, Darien, Connecticut 1929
c.

1931
(11. 7 x 16.8)

Mask, WaRegga, Belgian Congo 1935

8 x 572 (20.3 x 14)

37

x 2'A (8.3 x 5.7)

4 5/8 x 6 5/s
Child
in

Wall Street

Windows 1929

Backyard 1932

Part of Morgantown, West Virginia

1935
7 x 9 (17.8 x 22.9)

1%

2%

(4.8 x 6.7)

7/2 x 5 37 (19.1 x 14.6)

Berenice Abbott, 1930

6 5/8 x 4 5/e (16.8 x
1

South Street, New York, 1932

5'/8

1.7)

x7%(13x

19.7)

Sculptural Figure, Loango, French

Congo: Profile, Front, and Back Views

1935

77

37

(19.1 x 8.3)

each

Man
c.

with Cigar, Southeastern U.S.

Porch Grillwork, Mobile, Alabama 1936

5Va x 7 3/8 (14.3 x 18.7)

Pelican, Florida, 1941

6/4 x 5 (15.9 x 12.7)

1935

6 3/8 x 5 3/4 (16.2 x 14.6)

Southern Farmland
Prison Work Gang, Southeastern U.S.
c.

1936

Recreational Vehicle, Florida

5 5/sx7 5/a(14.3x 19.4)

1941

5%

8 3/ (14.6 x 22.2)

1935

5/2 x 6 3/4 (14 x 17.1)

Sprott, Alabama, 1936

8/2 x

Uninhabited Residence, near

7%

(21.6 x 18.4)

Sarasota, Florida

1941

Alabama Country Fireplace, 1936

9 5/a
x

5 3/4 x 7/s (14.6 x 18.1)

7%

(24.4 x 19.4)

Star Pressing Club, Vicksburg,

Mississippi, 1936

Halsted Street, Chicago, 1946

Battlefield Monument, Vicksburg,

Mississippi, 1936

6/2 x 6 (16.5

15.2)

7%

x 5/4 (19.4 x 13.3)

5 3/s x 3 3/a (13.7 x 8.6)

6/a x

Street Scene, New Orleans 1936 7/8 (15.6 x 18.1)

Man on the Street,

5 3/4 x 6/2 (14.6 x 16.5)

Detroit, 1946

Battlefield Monument, Vicksburg,

Mississippi, 1936

Portrait of

TA

8 (18.4

x 20.3)

Old Field Point,

James Agee, New York 1937

Man on the Street, Detroit 1946

6 x 7 3A (15.2
x 19.7)

4%
Church Organ and Pews, 1936, printed c. 1970
7/2 x 9/2 (19.1 x 24.1)

x 3/2 (12.1 x 8.9)

Shoppers, Randolph Street,

S. Klein s

Department Store,

Chicago 1946
15/2 x 12/4 (39.4 x 31.1)

New York 1937 5/2x6/ (14 x 15.9)

Subway Portrait, New York 1938
2 3/4 x 2 (7 x 5.1)

Easton, Pennsylvania, 1936

3 3/e x

Two Junked

Boilers, probably

5%

(8.6 x 13 7)

Detroit 1946
2 /ax 2 /a (5.4x5.4)

Frame Houses

in

Virginia, 1936

3 3/a x 5 3/a (8.6 x 13.7)

Subway Portrait, New York, 1938

5 x 7/2 (12.7 x 19.1)

'The Superrench'

Two-Ended

Wrench, 1955
9/2x7/2
(24.1 x 19.1)

Frame Houses
6
x

in

Virginia,

1936

4%

(15.2 x 12.1)

Subway Portrait, New York, 1938

5/2 x

8/

(14 x 21)

Parlor Chairs, Oldwick,

c.

New Jersey,

Furniture Store Sign near Birmingham,

1958
1

Alabama, 1936,

printed

c.

1970

7/2 x 9/i (19.1 x 24.1)

5/2 x

Subway Portrait, New York, 1938 8/ (14 x 21)

1

5 3/4 x 4/2 (14.6 x

1.4)

Stove, Heliker House, Cranberry

Minstrel Showbill
1

936

Grave, Florida,

941

Island,

Maine

1969

6%

5%

(17.1 x 14.6)

5/2 x 6/2 (14 x 16.5)

12%

x 8 3/4 (32.4 x 22.2)

Penny Picture Display, Savannah,

Georgia, 1936
3 3/ex 5 3/s (8.6 x
1

Memorial Day Parade, Bridgeport,

Connecticut, 1941
/sx 3/2 (9.8x8.9) 37

Audrey, Atlanta, 1973

8/2 x 8 3/a (21.6 x 21.3)

3.7)

Graffiti: "Here*

1974
3/a x 3/a (7.9 x 7.9)

Penny Picture Display, Savannah,

Georgia, 1936, printed 1974, from the
portfolio

Memorial Day Parade, Bridgeport,

Connecticut, 1941
7 3/4 x 4/2 (19.7
x
1

Polaroid

SX-70

print,

Walker Evans: Selected Photographs

3

1.4)

Graffiti on
Polaroid

Red

Pole, 1974

12%

x 10

/e

(32.7 x 26.4)

SX-70

print,

3/

x 3 'A (7.8 x 7.8)

Municipal Trailer Camp, Sarasota,

Florida, 1941

6 J/.x 8/ (17.1

x 21)

Palm Trees, The Gulf

Florida, 1941
7/2 x

of Mexico,

5%

(19.1 x 14.9)

PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE COLLECTION OF MARIAN AND BENJAMIN A. HILL

WALKER EVANS
simple secrets

December

11,

1998 -February 24, 1999

The Whitney Museum of American Art at Champion is funded by Champion

International Corporation.

Whitney Museum of American Art at Champion One Champion Plazo, Atlantic Street
at Tresser Boulevard

1998 Whitney Museum

945 Madison Avenue

of

American Art

New

York,

NY

10021

Stamford, Connecticut 06921

(203) 358-7630
This exhibition was organized by the High

Museum
am-5 pm

of Art, Atlanta.

Generous support
is

Gallery Hours
Tuesday-Saturday,
Free admission
1

for the exhibition

1

and publication

provided by Marian and Benjamin A.

Hill.

Publication of the exhibition catalogue

has been supported by Christie's

in
its

Gallery Talks
Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday ot

celebration of the 20th anniversary of

Photographs Department.

12:30

pm
The essay was
written by

Tours by appointment

Angela Kramer
in

Murphy, a free-lance writer based

New

York.

Staff
Eugenie Tsai
Associate Curator and Curator of

Design
Barbara Glauber

&

Beverly Joel/Heavy

Meto

Branches

Printing
Cynthia Roznoy Branch Manager
Enterprise

Lynne Dorfman
Gallery Coordinator

Paper
Education

Champion Kromekote'

Lynne Gray
Gallery Assistant
Public

Programs

Cover
Main
Street,

Saratoga Springs,
c.

New

York,

Susan

Collier

Saturday Receptionist
Patricia

1931, printed

1970

Bradshaw

Pamela Desmond
intern