Walker Evans/Baldwin Lee

When I attended the Foster Gallery on November 12, 2010, I didn't know what to expect. I never took an Art History class, so I've never heard of either Walker Evans or Baldwin Lee. When I sat there and watched Baldwin Lee, I couldn't stop listening. I loved looking at all the pictures that Walker Evans took. But before he did photography, Walker Evans loved literature. Baldwin Lee said that it was his number one love. He had two writer inspirations that helped him with that, Bolear and Polear. Even though literature was his number one love, photography was right behind it. Wish lucky for him, is where he became real famous in.

The one image that really made me wonder was the picture of the building that was uneven. When Baldwin went into detail about how the straight shot of the photograph was making it look all uneven. But when I finally took a closer look, I couldn't tell if it was really straight or just a slight angle. I then realized that the photograph is straight on and the building was uneven. When i say uneven, I mean the doors and windows didn't match up with the pillars. He knew this because he was an architect. It bugged him because he didn't understand how one person could design a place like this, why it never occurred to them that it looked imcomplete. I agree with him one hunderd percent; I'm the kind of person that would like every little detail to be perfect. If that meant making sure that the doors and windows are between the pillars than being covered by the pillars.

Another thing that caught my attention was that Walker Evans went and stayed with three poorer families for all together six weeks. During this time, he would take photographs of the families, there households, and just surrounds around town. The one picture that stuck out to me was this group family picture. Baldwin Lee talked about that photograph for lots of minutes. He pointed out almost each person; the mother, unhappy looking, feet all scarred up. The daughter, arm around the bed frame like a crutch. Young son, has no diaper or underwear. All of them have some sort of part in this picture to make the interpretation that they aren't the wealthiest of a family. "He manipulated his poses", says Baldwin. We to this day don't know for sure if that is just how they eneded up posing themselves or if Evans posed them himself.

"Every time you take a picture, you remember it", says Walker Evans. These words to me are true. When those words came out of Baldwin's mouth, I seemed to have a flash back from all the pictures I've taked in the last few years. I'm glad that I got to meet Baldwin Lee and hear his story about working with the famous Walker Evans. Now i know more about them than I did before.

Kimberly Brunetto