Artworks

WALKER EVANS (American, 1903 -  1975) 

Walker Evans was an American photographer and photo-journalist, known for his prolific documentation of the American people and landscape during the Great Depression. 

Evans was born in 1903 in St. Louis, Missouri. Evans began as a writer, though he quickly switched to photography as a means of documenting the world around him. As a part of President Roosevelt’s New Deal, Evans was commissioned by the Farm Security Administration to photograph the Great Depression’s impact on American communities. During this period, Evans captured some of the most famous photographs from that era. After leaving the FSA, Evans continued documenting the American experience through photography, collaborating with other artists such as writer James Agee. He is credited as an influence to several prominent photographers including Diane Arbus and Robert Frank. Evans died in 1975 at the age of 72. His work can be found in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, among others.