Walker evans: american photographs pdf
Walker Evans
Walker Evans American Photographs
About
A collective portrait of the Eastern United States during a decade of profound transformation.
This installation celebrates the 75th anniversary of the first one-person photography exhibition at MoMA, and the accompanying landmark publication that established the potential of the photographer’s book as an indivisible work of art.
Walker evans biography american photographs moma It closes with a survey of factory towns, hand-painted signs, country churches, and simple houses—the sites and relics that constitute the tangible expressions of American desires, despairs, and traditions He was particularly struck by the stylistic approach of Paul Strand and the Parisian street photography of Eugene Atget. The Depression years of —36 were ones of remarkable productivity and accomplishment for Evans. Using the standard journalistic picture-story format, Evans combined his interest in words and pictures and created a multidisciplinary narrative of unusually high quality.Together and separately, through these projects Walker Evans created a collective portrait of the Eastern United States during a decade of profound transformation—one that coincided with the flood of everyday images, both still and moving, from an expanding mass culture and the construction of a Modernist history of photography.
Comprising approximately 60 prints from the MoMA collection that were included in the book or exhibition, the installation maintains the bipartite organization of the originals: the first section portrays American society through images of its individuals and social contexts, while the second consists of photographs of American cultural artifacts—the architecture of Main streets, factory towns, rural churches, and wooden houses.
The pictures provide neither a coherent narrative nor a singular meaning, but rather create connections through the repetition and interplay of pictorial structures and subject matter. The exhibition’s placement on the fourth floor of the Museum—between galleries featuring paintings by Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Jackson Pollock, and Andy Warhol—underscores the continuation of prewar avant-garde practices in America and the unique legacy of Evans’s explorations of signs and symbols, commercial culture and the vernacular.
Lender
MoMA | Museum of Modern Art
Space Requirements
The exhibition was installed at MoMA in a sf gallery with running linear feet
Loan Duration
Week Loan
Partner Story
Commenting on the Present By Examining the Past
The Portland Museum of Art (PMA) has been and remains committed to a vision of inclusivity at their institution.
Their exhibitions and programming strive to provide, “art for all” and a voice for their community in the workings of their museum.
Art Bridges supported PMA in as a venue for the historic exhibition, Walker Evans American Photographs, during a time when our country was reeling from the impact of the COVID pandemic.
PMA staff stated, “This exhibition came to the PMA at a time of national turmoil and economic images of the hardships of the Great Depression provided a powerful historical context for our audiences to reflect on contemporary challenges.”