In 1935, a literary-minded dandy from New York named Walker Evans
traversed the country for 14 months on the government dime. In response
to the Great Depression, the Farm Security Administration (FSA)
commissioned a now-legendary group of photographers to document the
economic and social scene of the mid-’30s. Although Evans was a man of
few political convictions, the gig offered three major perks: a
paycheck, the use of a car, and the freedom to criss-cross the country,
making what would become one of the single most important bodies of
work in the history of photography.
In Walker Evans: Lyric Documentary, John T. Hill compiles a
“best of” from Evans’ FSA years, and sequences them in the approximate
order in which they were made. More than in any previous presentation
of Evans’ work, this allows us not only to watch the artist’s
maturation over the course of his seminal trip, but more compellingly,
to ride shotgun with Evans on his travels through the South.
Over the course of his FSA shooting, Evans fully developed what he
called his “documentary style.” He rejected the label “documentary
photographer,” and instead said that documentary was just the “style”
he worked in, implying that something altogether different was going on
underneath the surface. The true nature of his photographs here is a
literary sensibility: Influenced heavily by Gustave Flaubert, Evans
tried to make his camera “invisible,” in order to let the beauty and
ironies of his subjects do most of the talking. So to this end, Evans
eschewed fancy camera angles and darkroom tricks, modeling himself more
on anonymous postcard photographers than on aesthetic giants like
Alfred Stieglitz. This understated style of shooting rarely knocks
uninitiated viewers off their feet; Evans’ style is infectious, though,
and after repeated viewings, one begins to recognize his signature
motifs and sly winks to the audience.
The tritone reproductions here are among the finest I have ever
seen—of Evans’ photographs or anybody else’s—and their
tonal range actually surpasses Evans’ original black-and-white prints.
The book also includes detailed notes and visual aids from a lecture
Evans gave at Yale in 1964 entitled “My Aesthetic Autobiography,” which
only cements Lyric Documentary‘s current position as the best
Walker Evans monograph on the market today.