Walker Evans The Hungry Eye

I posted here late last month my impressions of the MOMA exhibit recreating the 1938 American Photographs show.  Seeing Evans' photos on display renewed my interest in the photographer and motivated me to finally read Walker Evans The Hungry Eye by Gilles Mora and John T. Hill, a copy of which had lain unopened on my bookshelves for years.

The big problem with any book that attempts a comprehensive overview of Evans' work is that the photographer's career extended over such a great length of time (almost a half century from 1927 to 1975) and contained so many important works that it would be difficult for any author to cover adequately the entire breadth of his oeuvre in a single volume.  And that is the problem here.  The study proceeds chronologically - first in groupings by years and then in sub-groupings that discuss the individual projects completed within those time frames.  Such an approach results in major accomplishments, such as the FSA work or Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, unfortunately receiving less attention than they deserve and minor assignments, such as the 1941 Florida Mangrove Coast photos, receiving only perfunctory mention in passing.  Most importantly, there is no attempt at a synthesis that would provide the reader with an understanding of the end to which Evans was working.  The artist's intentions remain an enigma.  In the Foreword, author John T. Hill speaks of  Evans' "purposes" but makes no attempt to define them.

"For Evans, photography was an infinitely malleable medium, one meant to be hammered to fit his own purposes.  For him, there were no canons or sacrosanct methods.  The camera was simply a convenient mechanism for collecting ideas, icons, and anecdotes.   Like a master carpenter selecting the right tool, Evans moved easily from one photographic format to another, choosing whichever seemed to suit the job at hand."

Evans, of course, is one of the key figures of 20th century photography not only for his own work, which was brilliant and innovative, but also for the influence he had on the generation of photographers who followed him.  His proteges included such notable figures as Robert Frank and Diane Arbus.  Evans stubbornly adhered to his own path in determining the direction his work was to take.  While Ansel Adams and Edward Weston were promoting straight photography purely as an aesthetic experience in the service of fine arts, Evans saw the importance of creating photos that captured the spirit of the country and its people, no matter how depressed or cynical their outlook might be.  This particularly incensed Adams who wrote of American Photographs: "A poor excuse, and imitation of the real beauty and power of the land and the real people inhabiting it."  And yet, through Evans' insistence on anonymity rather than on empahsizing the subject, his images were in themselves timeless and transcended any purely documentary function they might otherwise have had.

The reproductions of Evans' work contained in The Hungry Eye are excellent but often of such small dimensions, especially in Abrams' 2004 reduced format edition, that they lack the impact they would otherwise have had.  Also, there is very little technical information provided for any of the photos shown and this makes it difficult to fully appreciate the scope of Evans' achievement.  The text is limited to introductory remarks to each group of photos shown and is lacking any cohesive commentary.