In order to get the full effect of Walker Evans photographs, I believe, the photographs become more meaningful when the audience knows the context behind each photograph. For example, when Baldwin Lee came and gave a presentation on his former teacher, Walker Evans photographs taken during the Great Depression, two of the photos presented caught my attention. The first photograph I’d like to talk about is one taken, in 1936, of a shoeshine sign in a southern town. At first glance, one will notice the simple drawing of a shoe with the word shine underneath, eventually leading to the five pairs of shoes lined up under the sign. I find it intriguing that the black pairs of shoes are placed at the end of the line of white shoes, thus making them less noticeable or, one could argue, separate from the rest. This photographed was analyzed further in Baldwin Lees presentation. First, Lee shared with the audience that the word shine has more than one definition and one of them states that when using the word, shine, in reference to a black person it becomes offensive. After knowing this background information, the sign and the placement of the shoes becomes a statement about black segregation. Walker Evans was hired by the farm security administration to photograph and document the affects the Great Depression had on people who lived and worked in rural areas. One of the observations I noticed when viewing photographs from his co-published book, Let Us Praise Famous Men, was that most of the photographs were of “white” people’s hardships, which was not uncommon from this time period. Evans took photographs of a variety of different ethnicity, but i found it intriguing that very few of those photographs were published in the book he helped write and publish. This is another reason why I was so intrigued when Lees showed us the photograph of the shoeshine sign because it wasn't a photograph from the show itself, but it is one of the strongest examples of the conceptual nature of Walker Evans work. The photograph shows he is conscious to the discrimination of blacks in the world around him and chooses to raise awareness through this artwork. This photograph propelled me to find more information on how the Great Depression affected other elasticities, such as black people and, through further research, discovered that the unemployment rate of black people was two to three times that of whites, they received less aid from public assistance programs, and were even turned down by various charity organizations. My point is that seeing the photographs Walker Evans took of starving families and the extremely limited resources they had lived in, during the Great Depression, had me thinking about what it would look like to be worse off than them. Were there people who had less?Are there people who have less now, in our country and in others? Yes, but how can one imagine how those people look and live like compared to the images we've seen?

Walker Evans vivid images of cultural and social struggles, coupled with text can change our perceptions and alters our understanding of how he works. He is an artist who is capable of getting people to realize that "looking is harder than it looks," suggesting that one might not always see the underlying messages that reside in the details of a photograph and piece of art. The details are important in order to understand the whole picture. Throughout the history of photography there has been progressive discussions about when a photograph is just a documentation of what one sees through the lens and what makes a photograph become art. After listening to Baldwin Lee's presentation on Walker, one discovers that Walker manipulated camera angles, positioned people, and sometimes even rearranged the scenery he was photographing in order to capture a specific idea in hopes that it will provoke the viewer to ask questions. For example Walkers took many portraits of the same person and then selected the photograph that gave off the "right" feeling, mood, or statement he wanted to reveal. This objective and selective process, is where many people would say the photograph then becomes a form of art. Journalist and photographer, Jonathan Torgovnik has a similar way of photographing female victims/survivors of the 1994 Rowanda genocide. In the photograph below, Torgovnik purposely positions a mother with one of her daughters in the front and the other daughter in the background, creating a feeling of separation or tension. This conscious placement of the people along with the way the two figure in front are more in focus than the girl in the background, all work together to make this photograph a work of art. It is about the construction of the space and the way that the people look in comparison to each other and their surroundings. Another comparison of Walker Evans and Torgovnik is that they both include text with their photographs. In this picture, Torgovnik provides quotes from the mother, explaining that the daughter she holds came from a loving marriage and the daughter in the background was seen, by the mother, as a "product" of a sexual violence during the genocide. By combining the words and photographs, the message becomes more powerful.

"African Americans." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2010. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 14 Nov. 2010 <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/67474/African-American>.

Shoeshine Photograph:
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ug97/fsa/obj.html

Torgovnik, Jonathan. "Inteded Consequences: Rwandan Children Bron of Rape." Apature. 194 (2009): 44-49. Print.

Torgovnik Photograph:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/7000650.stm

Leah