Photographer of the Week - Walker Evans

 As part of my Journalism class we are required to create a report on a photographer of our choice. For this project I chose Walker Evans, a semi-abstract photographer turned historical storyteller. Starting off in the early 30s as a solo artist, he lived in New York and had a knack for capturing the everyday life within the city. The idea that he should be asked to make a photograph conceived by someone else was offensive to his ego; in addition, there were many sorts of photographs that he had never learned to make.

 From mid-1935 to early 1937 Evans worked for a regular salary as a member of the so-called “historical unit” of the Farm Security Administration (FSA; earlier, the Resettlement Administration), an agency of the Department of Agriculture, ran by Roy E. Striker. In any case it afforded Evans the means of traveling, generally alone and without immediate financial concerns, in search of the material for his art.

During the late summer of 1936 Evans was on leave from the FSA to work for Fortune magazine with writer James Agee on a study of three sharecropping families from Hale county, Alabama. The project never appeared in Fortune. Only after a few years in 1941 were his photos shown to the world through the book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.


Personally I found this picture of Allie Mae Burroughs to be his claim to fame but there are a huge amount of photos that he contributed over the years to FSA. This photo, also known as the Tenant Farmer's Wife, takes on a sort of Mona Lisa feeling where you can't quite tell what she's thinking or her feelings at the time. This is where I believe his sort of abstract eye for photography truly manifested.


Hale County, Alabama 1936

For more: https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/evan/hd_evan.htm


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My Choice - Environmental Photo

Image
       This week was up to me as a photographer and my favorite assignment from this year was the environmental and mug shot assignment. So this is Elisa Maddison and she is a student at OSU studying HDFS (Human Development and Family Sciences) to pursue a career in helping adults with disabilities.  When she isn't working on homework her hobby is art. She has been drawing for the past 10 years and has found her favorite medium includes recycling old records. To do this she will sand the record to be able to paint on it or if she is working on a collage then tape and glue suffices. Utilizing her drawing skills she also draws on her tablet to sketch out designs for tattoos, stickers and future record projects.  Though she hasn't been able to currently she hopes to be able to sell her designs and stickers soon. Her main inspiration comes from her parents who are also very versed in the arts and crafts department.    
Read more

Jeremy Randolph-Flagg -- Geology Teacher

Image
  Jeremy Randolph-Flagg is a geology teacher here at Linn Benton Community College whose been working here for the past 4 years. Normally he is the instructor for the Oceanography and Physical Science : Principals of Earth Science classes. This year it is his first time teaching my Historical Geology class. One of his favorite parts of teaching trying out different puzzles and activities to engrave the coursework into them in a fun and entertaining way. 
Read more

Lynsey Addario's "It's what I Do" -- book report

Image
“Trying to convey beauty in war was a technique to try to prevent the reader from looking away or turning the page in response to something horrible. I wanted them to linger, to ask questions.” - Lynsey Addario (It's What I Do)      This quote would have to be one of my favorites because the quote in itself makes you want to ask more questions. I found myself in awe when I first saw her pictures because at the time I had been listening to the audiobook and haven't seen any. However, as soon as I saw the pictures I simply couldn't look away and felt like I had to re-read the section the photo referenced so that I could understand all that was being said in both the book and the photo. The techniques she uses to capture photos like the one I'm including aren't exactly done with the camera itself, she has a way of integrating herself into the culture she's capturing. Weather it's the military, Taliban or just someone's home like in Afghanistan she utilizes
Read more