Walker Evans: The Hungry Eye
Evans (1903-1973), an immortal of the art-photography establishment he eschewed, had a distinct antipathy toward certain eminent colleagues--Stieglitz, Steichen, Edward Weston, Ansel Adams--in whose work he found undesirable dramatization. His own materials were everyday life and vernacular art and architecture in which he discerned aesthetic possibilities "when intelligent observation backed up by a culture was applied to them," notes French art historian Mora. A fine line positions Evans's fame, for, as seen in this retrospective volume, his "hungry eye" and visual judgment, combined with an aversion to artistic grandiosity, produced images that were innovative and arresting in the 1930s but might seem undistinguished today to the untutored eye. Included among the 300 photographs reproduced here are the 100-picture 1938 exhibition at Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art, "American Photographs," and selections from Let Us Now Praise Famous Men , a book collaboration by Evans and James Agee. Design on these pages , however, frequently overshadows art, with white space overwhelming the illustrations. A literal reproduction of the MOMA exhibition's original geometry and picture sequence so reduces many of the scenes that the reader can barely view them.Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.