Walker Evans: The Magazine Work

by Walker Evans (Photographer)

Walker Evans was one of the most important and influential artists of the twentieth century, who produced a body of photographs that continue to shape our understanding of the modern era. He worked in every genre and format, in black and white and in color, but two passions were literature and the printed page. While his photographic books are among the most influential in the medium's history, Evans' more ephemeral pages remain largely unknown. From small avant-garde publications to mainstream titles such as Harper's Bazaar , Vogue , Architectural Forum , Life and Fortune he produced innovative and independent journalism, often setting his own assignments, editing, writing and designing his pages. Presenting many of his photo-essays in their entirety, Walker The Magazine Work assembles the unwritten history of this work, allowing us to see how he protected his autonomy, earned a living and found audiences far beyond the museum and gallery.

Genres: Photography

256 pages, Hardcover

First published May 15, 2011

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

[Diego Munoz · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a comprehensive summary of Walker Evans life, focused on his magazine work. It starts with a 75 page essay which is recommended reading, and you can reference the articles at the back of the book, which are contained in their entirety.

For me, it put his work into context and I can now appreciate it more.

Aesthetically, it is a nice book. Quite large, with thick pages and a fresh book smell. My daughter mentioned that “it smells like a book” which is not a bad thing.

[Bill · Rating 5 out of 5]

If Walker Evans' famous Depression-era pictures for the Farm Security Administration long overshadowed his other work, his magazine career has been the most obscured of all. Employment at Henry Luce's Fortune can easily seem at odds with his very individual vision and his social consciousness. But David Campany makes an effective case for elevating the magazine spreads to the first rank, and the book includes numerous facsimiles as evidence. Evans had a great deal of creative control, and the magazine format allowed him to present photos and text in ways that make his ideas more explicit than you can garner from random prints.

[Ichor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although renowned primarily for his documentary photography of people during the Great Depression, this collection draws on Evans’s lesser known work to show that he also had a keen sensibility for the built environment they inhabited. In some of the earliest series photography on vernacular architecture, Evans clearly intuits that many aspects of the America he was living in would soon be lost to social, cultural and economic change. The resulting shots of hand-painted store signs, cargo train wagons, decaying stone warehouses and other forgotten contributors to our sense of place evoke a very particular American moment of urban upheaval that gave way to the world as we know it today.