Walker Evans

American Walker Evans' practice began as an abstractionist, exploring the new aesthetic possibilities of modernist society. His early subjects were architectural and focussed particularly on New York City. However, he soon became obsessed with recording the rawness of life lived by the poor and dispossessed. Employed on the WPA project in the mid-1930s during the Depression, he is most famous for his unflinching and unsentimental photographs of sharecroppers and migrant farm workers. With James Agee, he wrote and illustrated 'Let Us Now Praise Famous Men'.

Reading

Walker Evans at Work, essay by Jerry L. Thompson, Thames and Hudson 1948