Walker Evans ranks with Steiglitz, Steichen and Strand as an artist of the highest calibre. His images captured forever the harshness of the Depression, the beauty of 19th-century brownstone architecture, the very essence of American life. Evans began photographing regularly in 1927, and came to specialize in street life - views of buildings, of the roadside, and of the people of cities, towns and villages. His three years of work in the Depression-hit South produced his best-known series, the book "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men". While this was being prepared, Evans assembled his influential exhibition "American Photographs" at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, recreated here in its entirety. He continued to explore the rich potential of his medium and the American scene - Florida's swamps, Connecticut's munitions works, Faulkner's Mississippi, Chicago, California - even experimenting towards the end of his life with colour photographs - reproduced here for the first time in any book. This book has been assembled by John T. Hill, longtime friend of Evans and executor of his estate, and the distinguished French photographic writer Gilles Mora.
All phases of Evans' creative career are presented, each section preceded by an explanatory essay, establishing a definitive canon of Evans' finest work. The pictures themselves have been printed from original negatives.
- ISBN10 0500541833
- ISBN13 9780500541838
- Publish Date 1 November 1993 (first published 20 October 1993)
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 12 April 2011
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Thames & Hudson Ltd
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 368
- Language English