Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

Baldwin Lee, in my opinion, was an elegant speaker. Lee was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1951. He attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he earned a Bachelors of Science in 1972, and Lee earned a Masters of Fine Arts at Yale University School of Art in 1975. While attending MIT, Lee worked with Minor White, cofounder of Aperture magazine, and while attending Yale University School of Art he worked with Walker Evans. Lee worked as a dark room assistant to Evans. I found it very interesting that Evans spent little time in the dark room. I also found it interesting that he was not concerned with how great the exposure was for a given photograph, as long as the details were apparent.

Walker Evans utilized his unique ability to look, and arguably framed some of the greatest photographs ever taken. Evans was a master and seeing beyond the surface of the world around him. He knew exactly how to illuminate details in his photographs. In a photograph of a sharecropper’s wife, he used a flash bulb to light up the facial features and changed the emotion of the photograph.

It is interesting to compare Lee’s work to that of Evans. In “Black Americans in the South,” Lee obviously took the time to portray individuals in a certain manner. The faces are full of emotion coming from the eyes, mouth, and the folds and wrinkles in the face. Walker Evans’ attention to detail certainly influenced how Baldwin Lee approaches photography. I would be interested to know if how Lee feels about Evans’ intense desire to distance himself from the subjects he photographed. It seems strange that an artist would be so seemingly cold.

Sources:

Baldwin Lee, "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: Photos by Walker Evans" Artist lecture, UWEC- Foster Gallery, 12 November, 2010.

http://baldwinlee.com/default.htm

Zach Reiland