EVANS, Walker

About US-american photographer, Walker EVANS (1903-1975)

The importance of Walker EVANS is based essentially on the photographs he took during the Great Depression in the mid-1930s. With his work at the FSA, he continued the great American tradition of social documentary photographers, but used a very personal view of the people portrayed. Early he turned away from the pictorialism of Edward STEICHEN or Alfred STIEGLITZ. With the frontal, seemingly neutral approach in his architectural photography he is a forerunner of Bernd & Hilla BECHER. He can also be seen as a forerunner of 'Street photography'. His influence on Garry WINOGRAND is widely documented; for Helen LEVITT he was a cooperation partner and mentor in 1938/39. Furthermore it can be assumed that Robert FRANK's 'The Americans' was created under the influence of his work.

Photo books by and on works by Walker EVANS (a selection)

'Photograph ohne Vorbild' (2021) ; 'New Deal Photography' (2015); 'Walker Evans' (2017); 'Double Elephant. five volumes with works by Garry WINOGRAND, Manuel ÁLVAREZ BRAVO and by Lee FRIEDLANDER' (2015); 'American Photographs' (2012); 'Books on Books, #2: Walker Evans . American Photographs' (2010); 'Decade by Decade' (2010); 'Lyric Documentary' (2006); 'FSA. The American Vision' (2006); 'Documentary And Anti-Graphic Photographs', together with works by Manuel ÁLVAREZ BRAVO as well as by Henri CARTIER-BRESSON' (2004); 'The Hungry Eye' (2004); 'Preisen will ich die großen Männer' (1989); 'Walker Evans at Work' (1994, 1982); 'First and Last' (1978); 'Message from the Interior' (1966)