Went to see the Walker Evans opening at The UBS Art Gallery tonight.  Quoting from the online Press Release (below)

“Walker Evans: Carbon and Silver, on view from August 24 to November 17, 2006, will explore the legacy of documentary photography by focusing on a significant moment in American history and a definitive period in Evans’ career. Presented by the Yale University School of Art, where Walker Evans served on the faculty, the exhibition will honor Evans’ innovative work and lasting influence on the medium of photography.

A self-taught photographer, Walker Evans (1903-1975) developed a “lyric documentary” style. At the height of the Great Depression, the Farm Security Administration commissioned Evans to record the lives of rural families. He also worked with the writer James Agee on a project centered on Southern sharecroppers that evolved into the 1941 book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. The exhibition will feature approximately 88 photographs from 1935-1936 that exemplify Evans’ meticulously detailed and honest photojournalistic style. ”

 

Walker Evans
Roadside Stand near Birmingham, 1936

Walker Evans
Alabama Cotton Tenant Farmer’s Wife, 1936

Here’s someone looking at one of Waker Evans Photos (below) at the show tonight.

The opening at the UBS Art Gallery, located in the ground floor of the UBS Building at 1285 Avenue of the Americas was packed; most of the lobby of the building was full of people looking at the photos and eating and drinking.  I had a glass of wine and had eaten dinner before I arrived.

Walker Evans photos took me back to another time - but maybe that time is not so different than ours - as the want that is in the faces of many of the subjects is similar to the pain and suffering poor familes face today.

Sometimes I look at photos with one eye only - I can see depth in the photos that is absent when looking at them with both eyes.  While I’m familar with Walker Evan’s as a name in American Art, I had not really looked at his photos in any depth before, or been that aware of them. 

This show of Walker Evans work will be on till November 9th, 2006.