Exploitation and Artistic Credibility

While Baldwin Lee, a former assistant to Walker Evans, was finishing up his lecture about his work, he mentioned that Evans got paid for every single photograph he made. The way he worded it was something along the lines of, “He never made a photograph that he didn’t get paid for.” This got me thinking about artistic and professional credibility for artists who are making a lot of money off of his/her works. Especially in Evans case, he had refused to go back to the south and visit these families from the FSA project after the book (Now Let Us Praise Famous Men by James Agee) and the photographs had been published. Lee also made a point to mention that these families never received any type of compensation or their own copies of the books, which struck me as something quite significant and peculiar.
First, why didn’t Walker Evans want to provide compensation to these families? Second, why didn’t he want to ever re-visit these families after the work was published? Especially since Baldwin Lee did not know the answers to these questions, I have no way of knowing for sure either. However, my best guess would have to do with Evans wanting to stay true to separating the subjects of these photographs and stories and the real world where these works are published and make money.
While Evans came from a privileged background (he was able to get an education, etc.) and he had a job when others didn’t (during the Great Depression), his work was not necessarily primarily fueled by making money. If it was, he would have stuck to the strict guidelines of his original assignment given by Fortune magazine. Also, he preferred to be seen as more of an artist than simply as a documentary photographer. Walker Evans, according to my theory, may have not wanted to cheapen his artistic vision by compensating these families. Of course, this can bring to light another set of issues involving the fact that Evans’s privileged background got in the way of realistically and compassionately thinking about these families (it really would have been nice of him to share some of the wealth). Can his commitment to his artistic vision be enough to financially exploit these families? Can this even be called exploitation?

-Paula Hagen