Walker Evans

Walker Evans (November 3, 1903 – April 10, 1975) was an American photographer best known for his work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) documenting the effects of the Great Depression. Much of Evans's work from the FSA period uses the large-format, 8x10-inch camera. He said that his goal as a photographer was to make pictures that are "literate, authoritative, transcendent". Many of his works are in the permanent collections of museums and have been the subject of retrospectives at such institutions as The Metropolitan Museum of Art or George Eastman House. Evans took up photography in 1928 around the time he was living in Ossining, New York. In 1930, he published three photographs (Brooklyn Bridge) in the poetry book The Bridge by Hart Crane. In 1931, he took photo series of Victorian houses in the Boston vicinity sponsored by Lincoln Kirstein. In 1933, he photographed in Cuba on assignment for the publisher of Carleton Beals' then-forthcoming book, The Crime of Cuba, photographing the revolt against the dictator Gerardo Machado. In Cuba, Evans briefly knew Ernest Hemingway. Evans accepted an assignment in 1936 to produce a magazine article on the conditions among white sharecropper families in the U.S. South during the "Dust Bowl". It was the time of U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt's "New Deal" programs designed to help the poorest segments of the society. Evans spent eight weeks that summer researching their assignment, mainly among three white sharecropping families mired in desperate poverty. They returned with Evans' portfolio of stark images—of families with gaunt faces, adults and children huddled in bare shacks before dusty yards in the Depression-era nowhere of the deep south.

My initial thoughts when I looked at this image was poverty in southern america. the scene seems to be a bedroom which looks very dirty, old and gritty. The people within the image appear to be a family of three and again they do not look clean and they seem to be living in poverty. The image has a slight brown tint to it which adds to the dirty, gritty effect and gives off a sense of poverty so you can feel it rather than just see it visually. I admire the way he has captured the image and the simple straight on angle, this shows the simplicity of the image and straight away you can tell that it is documentary style photograph rather than a planned photoshoot. It appears as if the family are doing what they do in their every day lives and they was not prepared for this image which makes it even more interesting.

There are no colours used at all except grey and the brown tinge that makes me image look very old and gritty. I think using no colour within the image is effective because it allows the audience to view the image properly and the things in it rather than different colours jumping out the image. The brown adds a serious feel to the photograph and makes it look more like a documentary style photograph.

I admire this photograph and admire Walker Evans work a lot by the way he captures a serious feel to his images. The brown tinge in the photograph adds a old gritty look which I admire also. This documentary style attracts me a lot and I plan to work with the technique and produce some of my photographs using this style.