Jamie Nelson_Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

"Similar but extremely different at the same time" is how Baldwin Lee described the two portraits of Allie Mae Burrows that Walker Evan's took in his exhibition Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. These two photographs are an excellent example of how Evans manipulated scenes and the people in them in order to convey a message. In one of the photos Allie Mae seems to be smirking; laughing about something unknown to the viewer. The other photograph the other hand shows a battered and beaten woman. These two photographs are distinguished solely by the head position and the facial expression of the subject. During Lee's lecture, the photographer explains that each and every position of the camera was specifically chosen by Evans in order to convey meaning. "Thought, consideration and reflection of feelings a human can have" is how Lee described Evans' goal in what he was photographing. Evans style consisted of dead-on angleing not hiding any emotion or flaw from the viewer. Evans did have some manipulation going on in his photographs, however his photos are very real and very calculated in order to convey feeling and connection with these people.
Evans also used his eye to create as Lee put it "a collage of juxtiposition". He carefully chose his angling in order to create new meanings and feelings about a particulare image. Some examples of this would be a photograph of a building with an ionic order of Grecian columns in the front. Such a grand building during the great depression; someone wealthy enough to comission such a building is obviously doing rather well. However, upon closer examination you see that Evans has taken this photograph at this angle in order to showcase the sign on the front. Which ironically reads Signs. The person who thought themselve grand enough to inhibit such a building is now too down on their luck and was forced to sell their building to a sign maker. Evans does a terrific job in showing us that even the slightest angle change or manipulation can completely alter the meaning of an image.