The Lost Work

by Walker Evans, Belinda Rathbone, Clark Worswick

Walker Evans was perhaps the greatest "documentary artist" America has ever known. In a career that lasted forty-six years (1928-1974) Evans profoundly -- even radically -- changed the way Americans looked at themselves, their social causes, and their country. Drawn from a largely unseen private collection -- the largest private collection of Walker Evans photographs in the world -- this lavishly produced volume presents scores of pictures that have heretofore been inaccessible to the public.

Included are the familiar images of Evans's southern work (1935-36), as well as far less familiar images of Evans's friends and fellow artists; his work in Tahiti; photographs that he made of Victorian house architecture (1930-31); and photographs done on travels to England, Cuba, Maine, Nova Scotia, Chicago, and New Orleans. Importantly, Evans prefigured the work of photographers as diverse as Dorothea Lange, Harry Callahan, Robert Frank, and Garry Winogrand -- as well as two generations of American documentary photographers.

Authors Belinda Rathbone and Clark Worswick have written lively texts delineating the overlooked byways of Evans's career at a moment when a rediscovery of his life's work is taking place in both the museum world and in the world of photographic collecting.

The "lost" photographs of Walker Evans, perhaps the most important figure in twentieth-century photography, are seen here for the first time. Belinda Rathbone is a photography historian who has written widely on modern photographers. In her definitive biography, Walker Evans (1995), Rathbone interviewed more than a hundred friends and colleagues of Evans's, as well as his two former wives, and combed archives andletters to illuminate his singular vision and the complex personality that Evans carefully withheld from his photographs. Her research papers are now part of the Walker Evans Archive at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Genres: Photography, Art

264 pages, Hardcover

First published October 15, 2000

About the author

Walker Evans (November 3, 1903 – April 10, 1975) was an American photographer best known for his work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) documenting the effects of the Great Depression. Much of Evans's work from the FSA period uses the large-format, 8x10-inch 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 2000, Evans was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame

Reviews

[Arun Singh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Walker Evans

Always a statement towards the sky. I can feel Roark/Evans showing a tight fist towards the sky. With no malice. Just an statement of existence. It looks unique because very few people do it. But you can see the possibility of this gesture in everyone around him.

His human subjects look more human. Highlighting something hidden inside their humanity. Sculpting of time around them. You can feel the proximity just by looking at them. Even if you are looking at the digital screen having a digital rendition of the physical representation of the image. You can look deep into their eyes.

It is not confrontation that he is looking for. It is a hand extended towards them, with pure curiosity and humanity. And the people whom he is photographing actually do so.

And then the houses... I have never seen such humanized houses. I have seen the houses all my life but how do they take the characteristic of being human. One can feel the loneliness of their existence. Or the solitude. And the puzzle of the cities.

What makes it so... intriguing? Is it the eye of the beholder? Or the camera... what is happening in the instant when Walker's eye is beholding the human drama in front of it and then his fingers move, simple gesture and mechanics works and it is captured. Time capsules. The ultimate magic. And how this magic comes to us! Expands and holds us!

In many of Walkers' photos, you can easily replace the house with the human. And you can feel the exact same thing. In of the photos, a slanted brick roof is covering a simple cottage. Wooden patchwork at places in a farm. The house is secluded by a wooden fence with a door... and you can see that one will come at the door, look at the vast expanse in front of him/her. Will put his hands on the eyes and look towards the sky and say - It is a good day! and life will begin!

What Walker has been able to do is to capture the expanse of time in this still image yet, the forever moving soul is intact and that is the magic of Walker.

How does he do it? Everything his eye touches becomes human. This silent human drama that engulfs it... whether it is wooden/metal African tribal idols. What is that is giving him this power? Everything that Walker touches is absolved... it is lifted to a different spiritual plane, that is just in the sphere of our grasp... but we will feel that we need to do something extra to become worthy of touching it.

Even though these pictures are documentary style... there is nothing like accident in Walker's world. Everything is happening smoothly, no accident... no plan... it oscillates between these two world of happening and not happening at the same time. Exalted!

[Robert · Rating 2 out of 5]

The more Walker Evans I see the less impressed I am. He's like a Baseball player from the 19th Century - sure he might have been good, but there wasn't a lot of competition.