This was the very first image that really caught my eye when walking through the Walker Evans Let Us Now Praise Famous Men exhibit. This image depicts so many things, there is such a sadness in the child's eyes and the grip she has on the other persons arm.
What is especially interesting about his image, is when hearing Baldwin Lee speak about Walker Evan on Friday, November 12th he explained how Evans would often take a photograph of a group of people just to get a good shot of one person. I wonder if this was one of those images?
This was one image that portrayed more than just a child, the details of the child's clothes, I can see how dirty this child's clothes appear and how ragged they look.
This exhibit came about when in the later summer of 1938 Evans took a leave from the FAS to work with James Agee for Fortune magazine. They traveled to Hale County, Alabama to study three sharecropping families. The article for Fortune was never published but the project was turned into a book in 1941, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.
I found it very interesting listening to Baldwin Lee explain several of the photographs in Evans exhibit. He mentioned how Evans has a great knowledge about things and about these families that the viewer does not see. Many of the images are of something that we as outsiders may know nothing about. Or in the cases of the image of the bed, if Baldwin Lee pointed out that if you look closely, on the bedspread there are many flies, this is one of the ways Evans was able to show the viewer what it was truly like.
Baldwin Lee noted that all of Evans photographs are made with the thought that you would understand the hardships and the meaning behind the images. He also mentioned that each photograph was made with though and consideration.
Looking at how Evans photographs from the 1930s can parallel to what is seen today of Americans dealing with the current economic situation, can compare in several ways. In one aspect, if I were to take a photo of the homeless or the poor the emotion would show through the photo as it did in Evans images. The viewer would also be able to see the extra aspects of the photograph that show the economic hardships. For instance, going back to the image of the silverware hanging up outside, you can tell the family cannot afford anywhere to store their nice silverware and as Lee mentioned, by the mismatched and missing pieces, they don't have the money for anything better.
One thing that Lee said that really stood out to me was the fact that after the book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men was published, Walker Evans was asked to go back and revisit the families. Lee said Evans flat out refused to go back. He never wanted to see the families again and non of the people he photographed were given a copy of his book. This is very puzzling because you would think as a artist and photographer one would want to see how the lives of those people has evolved. Have their lives gotten better or worse? Then again, maybe that is exactly why he did not want to return, because he did not want to face what may have become of those people.
Overall, I found this to be an excellent art exhibit. To see the emotion in each and every person is amazing and is not something every photographer can easily portray but Walker Evans was able to do exactly that along with telling a story in every one of his images.
Sources:
http://www.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&biw=1600&bih=747&tbs=isch%3A1&sa=1&q=walker+evans+let+us+now+praise+famous+men&btnG=Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=
Katie Belmer
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