1940's The Arts | Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

Photographs

By: Walker Evans

Date: 1941

Source: Agee, James, and Walker Evans. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1941.

About the Artist: Walker Evans (1903–1975) was a photographer, writer, and teacher. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, he graduated from Phillips Academy and spent a year at Williams College. His interest in documentary photography led him to record city streets, American nineteenth-century architecture of buildings and homes, and the people and places of the rural South, especially during the Great Depression. He worked for Fortune magazine for twenty years and then taught graphic design at Yale University for ten years.

Introduction

Early on, Walker Evans wanted to be a writer and a painter. He spent a year in Paris auditing courses at the Sorbonne and reading Gustave Flaubert and Charles-Pierre Baudelaire. After...