Baldwin Lee visited the UW-Eau Claire campus on November 12, 2010 and presented a lecture regarding his experience as Walker Evans’ final darkroom assistant at Yale. Through looking at the numerous photographs in the exhibit, one cannot but help notice the great amount of detail in each picture. Paired with that, when Lee described his experience, I found out that everything in the photos were there for a reason. Nothing is in Evans photographs that he does not mean to be there. For example, the photograph of a plantation house could have been a beautiful picture of a large white house. Instead, a large burnt stump is situated in front of the house in order to make some sort of point that Evans had in mind. Another example of Walker Evans’ intentions is the photograph of the scavenged images of graduates and Santa Claus. Baldwin Lee indicated that the graduation and Christmas are on opposite sides of the calendar and this therefore represented the difference between someone’s desires and their own reality. He further explained that this person who decorated this part of the building could have been an artist if circumstances had been different and they had the money to afford such a lifestyle; however, the cardboard behind the images is meant to be some sort of make-shift repair work and therefore represents the disparity of the person’s living situation. Knowing this information, when looking at the photograph one cannot help but feel empathy for the decorator who is stuck in his own circumstances. My final example is regarding one of Walker Evans’ most famous photographs of the sharecropper’s wife. It is intriguing to know that there are two of these photos in circulation with very slight differences. One photograph seems much more open and content. Her slight changes in her mouth and the use of the flash bulb which lifted out some of the deeper lines in her face makes the photograph have completely different emotional content in comparison to the one with dark lines and a small frown. Depending on how Evans wanted to use the photograph would probably determine which one he actually uses.
Another observation regarding Baldwin Lee’s lecture on Walker Evans is that all the photographs say something about people and their statuses or way of life. These images depict a story about these particular people which makes sense due to his foremost love: words and writing. There are no photos in the exhibit of solely nature; every photograph seems to have something man-made in effort to describe how humans are acting and dealing with the degradation of the Great Depression in the southern United States. Walker Evans seems to also strive for imperfection and the beauty in the story of such imperfections. An example of how Evans strives to say something about humans without even having people in the photo is the photograph of a pair of shoes. This photo raises questions. Whose shoes are they? Why are they there? Why are they in such a poor condition? These questions all pertain to the owner and although the questions remain unanswered, and the photograph does not give very much information, the viewer is then allowed to draw their own opinions about the owner. Another such photograph that says something about people is the famous photograph of the sharecropper’s wife. This time the photograph includes a human being so the viewer is able to observe and get a feel for what the subject feels. The sharecropper’s wife has had numerous children and is constantly helping her husband on the farm and on top of that, she must still maintain the house and keep the children in line. It is no wonder she appears exhausted. Her appearance tells the audience that she barely has time to care for herself and the conditions of the Great Depression in the south does not help her situation. Evans wished to share this with the audience by documenting this woman. He wanted to tell a story about a human being and her way of life. Whether Evans included a person in his photographs or not, he wished to relay a story or a message about status or lifestyle although they may not always pertain to one person in particular.
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