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Walker Evans

(USA 1903-1975)

Walker Evans is the American photographer who has influenced more than any other the modern documentary photography of the 20th century. With his anti-conformist nature, he rejected the prevailing pictorialist view of artistic photography, supported by the main proponent Alfred Stieglitz, and constructed a new artistic strategy based on the description of common facts in a detailed and poetic manner. Evans has been described as the photographer with the sensibility of a poet and the precision of a surgeon… Following independently his artistic strategy, he built a body of work based on the description of American everyday life. His preferred subjects are the vernacular architecture, street scenes, advertising, billboards, shop windows, passers-by, automobile culture, and most important the description of American poor conditions during Great Depression. Evans is the first photographer that the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) New York dedicated a personal photography exhibition in 1938. He was an independent and authoritative figure in photography. For two decades he worked as an editor and writer for Time and Fortune magazines, where he designed the layout and the accompanied words of his photography. In the end of his career he taught photography at Yale University. His photography has influenced a generation of photographers, such as Robert Frank, Le Friedlander, Garry Winogrand, Diane Arbus, the Bechers, and other genres of art, such as: cinematography, theater, and literature.

© Walker Evans, Truck and Sign New York, 1930

The first years

Walker Evans began photographing at the age of 25, with his Kodak handheld camera, during his stay in Paris, where he was studying French literature at the Sorbonne University. Evans aspired to become a writer, but upon his return to New York in 1928, he exchanged the writer's dream for the profession of the photographer. The first photographs are scenes of everyday American life and urban environments: New York streets, Victorian buildings, Brooklyn Bridge, abstract compositions of emerging new architecture, street advertisements, and storefronts. Repeating motifs in his photography are: letters, signs, numbers in billboards and road advertisements. He documented the city through the eyes of a historian and anthropologist, finding what was authentic and American in character. The main influences in his photography were: Eugene Atget and August Sander; while the favourite writer: Gustave Flaubert, from whom he adopted the saying: "An artist must be in his work like God in Creation, he should be everywhere felt, but nowhere seen”.

© Walker Evans, Brooklyn Bridge New York, 1929

© Walker Evans, U.S. Rubber Sign, New-York, 1928-1929

© Walker Evans, Movie Poster, New York, 1930

© Walker Evans, Parked Car, Small Town Main Street, 1932

© Walker Evans, Street Scene with Telephone Pole and Lines, Provincetown Massachusetts, 1931

© Walker Evans, Construction Shack, New York, 1929

Havana

In the early 1930s, Evans was sent to Cuba to photograph the worker’s conditions during the dictatorship of Gerardo Machado. Here he photographed the slums, the street beggars, the police, the port workers, developing the human side of his latter photography. The photographs were published in 1933 in the book “Crimes of Cuba”.During his stay, Evans accompanied Ernest Hemingway, to whom he left 46 photographic prints for fear of being confiscated by the Cuban authorities. These prints were found in Havana in 2002, and were presented in a photographic exhibition.

© Walker Evans, Havana Dock Worker, 1932-1933

© Walker Evans, Squatters Village Cuba, 1933

Years of the Great Depression

During the years 1935-1937 Evans worked for the government's New Deal Resettlement program (later called the Farm Security), to document the life of South American farmers during the Great Depression. In this project he developed his artistic style to documented the facts in a detailed precise and neutral way, using a large format 8x10 inch camera. A collection of his works was displayed at the Museum of Modern Art in 1938 entitled "American Photographs", which is the first personal exhibition that MOMA dedicated to a single photographer. The book of the same title with 100 photographs by Evans, accompanied with a critical essay by Lincoln Kirstein, remains today one of the most influential books in the history of modern photography.

© Walker Evans, Roadside Store between Tuscaloasa and Greensboro, Alabama-1935

© Walker Evans, Easton Pennsylvania, 1935

© Walker Evans, Breakfast Room at Belle Grove Plantation White-Chapel, Louisiana, 1935

© Walker Evans, Houses and Billboards Atlanta, 1936

© Walker Evans, View of Easton Pennsylvania, 1936

© Walker Evans, Graveyard and Steel Mill Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 1935

© Walker Evans, Birmingham Steel Mill and Workers Houses, 1936

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

During 1936, Evans undertook a trip to the South, with the writer and friend James Agee, to document the difficult lives of three sharecropper families affected by the economic crisis. The project, which was rejected for publication by Fortune magazine, was published in 1941 in the form of a book of pictures by Evans and text by Agee, entitled "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men". The photos of this project remain iconic images of America affected by the Great Depression.

© Walker Evans, Coal Miner's House West-Virginia, 1936

© Walker Evans, Farmers Kitchen Hale-County Alabama, 1936

© Walker Evans, Sharecropper Hale-County Alabama, 1936

© Walker Evans, Church Organ and Pews, Alabama, 1936

© Walker Evans, Negro Church South Carolina, 1936

© Walker Evans, Barber Shop Vicksburg Mississippi, 1936

© Walker Evans, Country Store and Gas Station, Alabama, 1936

© Walker Evans, Roadside View Alabama Coal Area Company Town, 1936

© Walker Evans, Roadside Stand near Birmingham, Alabama, 1936

© Walker Evans, Window Display Bethlehem Pennsylvania, 1935

© Walker Evans, Penny Picture Display, Savannah 1936

Subway Portraits

From 1938-1941, Walker Evans photographed New Yorkers on the subway, captured by his Contax 35mm camera, hidden under his coat. The photographic series was published many years later (1966), under the title "Many are called".As he puts it, he wanted to photograph people "when the guard is down and the mask is off." The motif of casual passers-by, is a recurring motif in Evans work. While working for Fortune in 1946, he photographed with Rolleiflex a series of portraits of workers on the streets of Chicago, which are published in 2 pages of the magazine under the title "Labor Anonymous".

© Walker Evans, Subway Portrait, 1938-1941

© Walker Evans, Labor Anonymous, Fortune November 1946, pp152-153

**Years in Time and Fortune Magazine**

Evans worked for Time magazines (1943-1945), and later for Fortune (1945-1965) as a photo editor, producing over 400 photos and 46 articles. Evans had complete control over the publication of his photographs, he chose the subjects himself, the accompanying writings and the layout of the magazine. Having photographed America at its most difficult years, now Evans captures its rise as the world superpower, the culture of automobile and consumerism.

© Walker Evans, Burlesque Theater, Chicago 1946

© Walker Evans, Views of Pedestrians Uniontown, Maryland, 1946

© Walker Evans, Pedestrians Uniontown Maryland, 1946

© Walker Evans, Shoppers Randolph Street, Chicago 1946

© Walker Evans, Lamp on Table, Evans Apartment New-York, 1946

© Walker Evans, Details of Clapboard House, 1960

Last years

In 1965, Evans began teaching photography at Yale University School of Art and Design. During the ’70s he experimented with colour photography, and the Polaroid SX-70 camera, with an unlimited supply of film from Kodak. These photographs are interesting studies of colour and shape, on Evans' preferred motif: architecture, portraits and signs.

© Walker Evans, New-York Streets, 1957-1959

© Walker Evans, Telephone Pole and Red Barn, 1974

Walker Evans's photographs are in the collections of:

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Library of Congress

Museum of Modern Art, New York

Selected Books by Walker Evans

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W. Eugene Smith

(U.S.A 1918-1978)

W. Eugene Smith was an American photographer, known as the father of photo essay in the American editorial of the '40s and '50s. He created the genre’s model and standards that were followed for a long time. Eugene Smith worked for several magazines of the time such as: Newsweek, Life, and for the agency Magnum as a freelancer. His most famous photos essays are (in chronological order): World War II (1943), Country Doctor (1948), The Midwife (1951), The Spanish Village (1951), Man of Mercy (1954), Pittsburg (1955), Jazz Loft (1965), Minamata (1971).

During his career in photography, Eugene Smith is distinguished for his humanism, the need to know his subjects well, the perfectionism and anti-conformism to the dictate and boundaries set by the mass media. More than a photojournalist, he is a director of storytelling and a poet of photography through the use of light and chiaro-scuro.

US Marine World War II. Photograph by W. Eugene Smith

A Hospital in a Philippine Cathedral (Island of Leyte). Photograph by W. Eugene Smith

“The walk to Paradise garden” 1946, Photography W. Eugene Smith

“Country Doctor, Ernest Ceriani”, 1948, Photography W. Eugene Smith

His most important photo essays addressing the theme of urbanisation and consequences of industrialisation are; Pittsburg (1955) and Minamatas (1971).

Eugene Smith began photographing Pittsburgh in 1955 when writer and publisher Stefan Lorant asked him a series of photographs to illustrate his book on the city's 100th anniversary. Smith saw this commission as a personal project. He extended the duration of the project from three months to three years, and expanded the subject by photographing the modernity and the steel industry, as well as other topics that did not belong to government propaganda, such as working class conditions, poor neighbourhoods, the immigrants, the African American community, preceding the riots of the 1960s. In this project, Smith built a rich archive consisting of 17,000 photographic images and audio recordings, a small part of which have been published.

Inside Mellon National Bank. Photograph by W. Eugene Smith.

International Union of Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers. Photograph by W. Eugene Smith

City Council Chamber, Pittsburg, © Photography W. Eugene Smith

Children at Colwell and Pride Streets, Hill District. Photograph by W. Eugene Smith

Pittsburg, 1955, Photography by W. Eugene Smith

Sixth Street Bridge over Allegheny River. Photograph by W. Eugene Smith

Steelworker wearing goggles and a hardhat. Photograph by W. Eugene Smith

Rails, Homestead works, U.S. Steel, Monongahela River. Photograph by W. Eugene Smith

US Steel Pittsburg, 1955 Photograph by W. Eugene Smith

Pittsburg 1955 Photograph by W. Eugene Smith

In Minamata series (1971-1973), Eugene Smith photographs the inhabitants of Minamata coastal area in Japan affected by a severe disease caused by mercury in the industrial waste of Chisso factory, a giant chemical industry in the area. In 1972, Smith was attacked by Chisso Company, to stop the publication of the project on Minamata disease, which caused him severe injuries and loss of vision. The photo essay was published in 1975 and its main photo was ‘Tomoko Uemura in Her Bath”, shot in 1971, showing a mother in a traditional Japanese bathtub, with her daughter deformed by the disease. The photo drew public attention to the Minamata disease. Smith's photographs were the main evidence in the trial against Chisso, and the first case in Japan where a company became liable of the damages it caused to the people, which made Smith a national hero in Japan.

Minamata, 1972 Photography W. Eugene Smith

Minamata 1971 Photograph by W. Eugene Smith

Goi, near Tokyo. Demonstration at the Chisso Plant. 1971 Photograph by W. Eugene Smith

Demonstrators against the Chisso Chemical Company demonstrating in front of the plant near Tokyo during the Pollution Board hearings. 1971. Eugene Smith

After Minimata project, Eugene Smith returned to America, but was not able to photograph anymore. He taught at university and arranged his archive until 1978, when he died of a heart attack. Eugene Smith believed in the power of photography to change the world. In 1980, the Eugene Smith Fund was established to finance humanitarian photographic projects that cannot be funded by the mass media, contributing to the growth of the independent voice of photographers.

W. Eugene Smith Fund: https://www.smithfund.org/humanistic-photography

Selected Books by W. Eugene Smith

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Berenice Abbott

Berenice Abbott is an American photographer known for documenting the architecture and metropolitan life of New York with all its contrasts in the ’30s of the Great Depression. She photographed with an 8x10 inch camera the new architecture of New York that was emerging, but also the places that were disappearing from development.

Berenice Abbott

(U.S.A 1898-1991)

Berenice Abbott is an American photographer known for documenting the architecture and metropolitan life of New York with all its contrasts in the ’30s of the Great Depression. Berenice Abbott is known for her documentary style, outside of any subjectivism and pictorialism. She photographed with an 8x10 inch camera the new architecture of New York that was emerging, but also the places that were disappearing from development. Her main influence was the French photographer Eugene Atget, who scrupulously photographed old Paris, which was disappearing from the modernity of the early 20th century. Abbott called Atget ‘the Balzac of the camera’ and an ‘urban historian’. She is credited with rescuing Atget's archive when, after his death, she bought all the negatives and took them to America, where she worked to publish his work. In the last years of her career Berenice Abbott was involved in the technical and scientific aspects of photography.

One of her expressions is "The world doesn't like independent women, I don't know why, but I don’t care"

© Berenice Abbott, New York at Night, 1932

© Berenice Abbott, Grand Central Station, 1934

© Berenice Abbott, Construction of old-and new from Washington Street, 1936

© Berenice Abbott, Pike and Henry Street, 1936

© Berenice Abbott, West Street, 1932

© Berenice Abbott, Blossom Restaurant Manhattan, 1935

© Berenice Abbott, Broome Street Manhattan

© Berenice Abbott, Henry Street Manhattan, 1935

© Berenice Abbott, Portrait of Eugene Atget, 1927

© Berenice Abbott, Hester Street Manhattan, 1938

© Berenice Abbott, Newsstand Manhattan, 1935

© Berenice Abbott, Manhattan Skyline, 1936

© Berenice Abbott, Self-Portrait Distortion, 1930

© Berenice Abbott, Seventh Avenue Manhattan, 1935

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Gabriele Basilico

Gabriele Basilico is an italian photographer known for its urban and cityscape photographs. He is one of the best european and international contemporary photographers of the 20th century. Graduated as an architect from the Polytechnic University of Milan in 1973, he devoted his entire career documenting urban and metropolitan landscapes transformed from an industrial to post-industrial society.

Gabriele Basilico

(Milano 1944-2013)

© Gabriele Basilico, Milano Ritratti di Fabbriche, 1978-1980

Documenting the urban change was his main objective. In his autobiographical book "Architecture, Cities, Visions: reflections on photography" he states : “I had given myself a kind of mission, to witness how urban space changes… Cities resemble each other, but they are not all the same: there are social differences, of history, of size, of latitude, of climate. I think that urban space, subjected to an unprecedented change in history, presents itself as a real metaphor for our society, which certainly deserves to be observed with great attention”.

On the issues of transformation, shape and identity, Gabriele Basilico has published over 100 photography books during his 40-year career. The main cities he has documented are Milan, Rome, Bari, Barcelona, Berlin, Madrid, Lisbon, Naples, Hamburg, Beirut, Genoa, Istanbul, Moscow, Paris, Shanghai, San Francisco, Rio de Janeiro, etc. His first project was in 1978-1980 "Milan-Factory Portraits", presented in 1983 at PAC Milan (Contemporary Art Pavilion). The first international project came in 1984 when he and other photographers were commissioned by the French government in Mission DATAR to document the transformation of contemporary landscape. From here the book "Bord de Mer" was created. The theme of ports and the sea accompanies him, as in the project of Genoa, concluded in the book “Porti di Mare” (1990).

© Gabriele Basilico. LeTouquet, France 1984

In 1991 he took part in the internationally renowned project, photographing Beirut destroyed by the 15-year civil war, along with other photographers such as Rene Burri, Robert Frank, Jodeph Koudelka, Raymond Depardon and Fouad Elkoury. In 1996 he participated in the Venice Biennale with the exhibition, “Cross Sections of a Country”, where he received the Osella d’Oro Award for Contemporary Architecture Photography. In 1999 he published the book "Interrupted City" and "Cityscapes" with over 300 urban photographs taken since the early ‘80s. In 2000 he photographed the Berlin metropolitan area, from which the book “Berlin” was created that won the best photography book award in 2003. In 2007, he was invited by SFMOMA (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art), to develop a photography project in the Sillicon Valley metropolitan area, published in the book "Gabriele Basilico-Sillicon Valley". Another project of this year is "Vertical Moscow", photographed from the seven towers of the Stalinist period. In the coming years 2010-2012 his work will be extended to other world metropolis; Istanbul, Shanghai, Rio de Janeiro. The latest project is in Milan 2012, documenting the construction of Porta Nuova from its inception to the completion.

The photography of Gabriele Basilico is known for its monumentality and silence, the lack of people, the contrast in black and white, which reinforce the grandeur of architecture and gives the place a metaphysical character. He is interested in social and historical stratifications. As he states : "I can not help but see the city as a large body that breathes, a body in transformation, and I am interested in grasping its signs, observing its shape, like the doctor who investigates the modifications of the human body to study its nature. I am constantly looking for new points of view, as if the city were a labyrinth and my gaze was looking for a precise point of penetration”.

Gabriele Basilico's photography is documentary in character, but far from advertising and propaganda. He doesn’t capture the 'decisive moment' as Bresson, but is meditative and analytical as Atget, Evans, and Beckers. As Francesco Bonami says, "Basilico’s work is not a celebration of architecture and its symbolic value, but a discourse about the aesthetic value of architecture and the constant tension between this and its social function". During his entire life, Basilico has explained his photography in many articles, conversations and books. But the paragraph that most synthesizes his thinking is: “Photographing the city does not mean choosing the best architecture and isolating it from the context to enhance its aesthetic, but for me it means exactly the opposite. That is, putting in the same level high-end architecture with ordinary one, building a place of coexistence, because the real city, the city I am interested in, contains this mixture of excellence with mediocre, the center with periphery, a vision of urban space that once we would have called democracy ”.