A 75th-anniversary facsimile edition of one of the most significant photobooks ever published

More than any other artist, Walker Evans invented the images of essential America that we have long since accepted as fact, and his work has influenced not only modern photography but also literature, film and visual arts in other mediums. The original edition of American Photographs was a carefully prepared letterpress production, published by The Museum of Modern Art in 1938 to accompany an exhibition of photographs by Evans that captured scenes of America in the early 1930s. As noted on the jacket of the first edition, Evans, photographing in New England or Louisiana, watching a Cuban political funeral or a Mississippi flood, working cautiously so as to disturb nothing in the normal atmosphere of the average place, can be considered a kind of disembodied, burrowing eye, a conspirator against time and its hammers. This seventy-fifth anniversary edition of American Photographs, made with new reproductions, recreates the original 1938 edition as closely as possible to make the landmark publication available for a new generation. American Photographs has fallen out of print for long periods of time since it was first published, and even subsequent editions--two of which altered the design and typography of the book in small but significant ways--are often available only at libraries and rare bookstores. This version, like the fiftieth-anniversary edition produced by the Museum in 1988, captures the look and feel of the very first edition with the aid of new digital technologies.

Walker Evans (1903-1975) took up photography upon his return to New York in 1927, following a year in Paris when his aspiration to become a writer withered in the shadow of Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Joyce. In 1935, Evans was commissioned by the Farm Security Administration to photograph the effects of the Great Depression in the Southeast. During this time he took many of the photographs that appeared in his collaboration with James Agee, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941), a book which has become a defining document of that era. Evans joined the staff of Time magazine in 1945 and shortly thereafter became an editor at Fortune, where he stayed for the next two decades. In 1964, he became a professor at the Yale University School of Art, where he taught until his death in 1975.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author James Agee and renowned photgrapher Walker Evans's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men is a landmark work of American photojournalism renowned for its fusion of social conscience and artistic radicality (The New York Times)

In the summer of 1936, James Agee and Walker Evans set out on assignment for Fortune magazine to explore the daily lives of sharecroppers in the South. Their journey would prove an extraordinary collaboration and a watershed literary event when, in 1941, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men was first published to enormous critical acclaim.

This unsparing record of place, of the people who shaped the land and the rhythm of their lives, is intensely moving and unrelentingly honest, and today -- recognized by the New York Public Library as one of the most influential books of the twentieth century -- it stands as a poetic tract of its time. With an elegant design as well as a sixty-four-page photographic prologue featuring archival reproductions of Evans's classic images, this historic edition offers readers a window into a remarkable slice of American history.

The photography of Walker Evans (1903-75) is introduced in a new, redesigned and expanded edition of Aperture's classic book from its Masters of Photography series. Evans helped define documentary photography and is considered one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. He captured the American experience from the late 1920s to the early 1970s with graceful articulation. From 1935 to 1937, Evans documented rural America during the Great Depression while working for the Farm Security Administration. Much of Evans' work from that period focused on three sharecropping families in southern Alabama, culminating in the revolutionary 1941 photobook Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, with text by James Agee. His enduring appreciation for inanimate, seemingly ordinary objects and the vernacular as subject matter is evident in his photographs of shop windows, rural churches, billboards and architecture. Photography historian David Campany contributes a new introduction and image commentary to this volume, which includes some of Evans' best known and loved photographs.

Walker Evans shot the photographs collected in Labor Anonymous as an assignment for Fortune magazine, which published a small selection of 20 images in its November 1946 issue, under the title On a Saturday Afternoon in Detroit. Until now, however, the entire series of 50 photographs has never been reproduced. Evans' extraordinary serial studies of the facial expressions and postures of Detroit workers walking the city's streets are fascinating both as portraiture and as a surprising dimension of his photographic style. Shooting passersby against a plywood backdrop as they crossed his field of vision from distant right to close left (some noticing him, most not), with the light striking and modeling their features, Evans found that what he was creating with these images was the physiognomy of a nation. This book compiles the photographs, contact sheets, small-version printlets, Evans' annotations to newspaper clippings, drafts for an unpublished text, telegrams and every available print Evans made, along with the Fortune spread as published. Labor Anonymous captures a long-vanished moment in American history, and a crucial project in Evans' oeuvre.
Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Walker Evans (1903-75) took up photography in 1928. His book collaboration with James Agee, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941), which portrayed the lives of three white tenant families in southern Alabama during the Depression, has become one of that era's most defining documents. Evans joined the staff of Time magazine in 1945, and shortly after moved to Fortune magazine, where he stayed until 1965. That year, he became a professor of photography at the Yale University School of Art. Evans died at his home in Old Lyme, Connecticut, in 1975.

Walker Evans in his own words: the legendary interview, back in print

In 1971, Art in America published an interview with Walker Evans conducted by Leslie George Katz, writer and publisher of the Eakins Press.

The interview is charming and illuminating in its clarity and candor. Nearing the end of his life, Evans speaks freely about his influences and how he got started as a photographer (I was damn well going to be an artist and I wasn't going to be a businessman, he remembers), and reflects back on his work and his thinking. The interview has become legendary, consulted by curators, scholars and students for half a century and considered a definitive source for insights into the process, philosophy and personality of one of America's greatest photographers.

In 1995, the Eakins Press Foundation republished Evans' interview in a deluxe clothbound edition titled Walker Evans Incognito. More than 20 years later, this new edition brings the Evans interview back into print in an elegant and affordable volume for a new generation. Walker Evans scholar Anne Bertrand introduces the interview and its publication history, and contributes notes throughout the text that provide important contextual information. Walker Evans: The Interview offers an opportunity to rediscover the man behind the famous images, in his own words.

Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Walker Evans (1903-75) took up photography in 1928. His book collaboration with James Agee, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941), which portrayed the lives of three white tenant families in southern Alabama during the Depression, has become one of that era's most defining documents. Evans joined the staff of Time magazine in 1945, and shortly after moved to Fortune magazine, where he stayed until 1965. That year, he became a professor of photography at the Yale University School of Art. Evans died at his home in Old Lyme, Connecticut, in 1975.

Leslie George Katz (1918-97) was the founder and publisher of the Eakins Press Foundation. Until his death in 1997, he wrote extensively about American art and culture, and through his sustained efforts to celebrate his heroes--Thomas Eakins, Walt Whitman, and Walker Evans--found a way to define a new sort of democratic, patriotic intellectualism.

A refreshing look at Walker Evans' photography during his years at the Resettlement Administration/Farm Security Administration (1935-1938). Over one hundred photographs from the Library of Congress archives, including famous and little known shots, show Evans' skill as well as his workflow and shot selection process. Background information is provided for several photographs, including locations, detailed descriptions of subjects and social context. Organized into chapters based on subject matter, this 92 page book features sections on places, signs and people.This is the first volume in a series highlighting the work of government photographers in the 30s and 40s. Photographers profiled include Dorothea Lange, Marion Post Wollcott, Edwin Locke, Theodor Jung, Ben Shahn, Sheldon Dick, Russell Lee, Marjory Collins, Gordon Parks, Jack Delano, John Vachon and others.

A refreshing look at Walker Evans' photography during his years at the Resettlement Administration/Farm Security Administration (1935-1938). Over one hundred photographs from the Library of Congress archives, including famous and little known shots, show Evans' skill as well as his workflow and shot selection process. Background information is provided for several photographs, including locations, detailed descriptions of subjects and social context. Organized into chapters based on location, this 92 page book features photographs from Southern Virginia and Winston-Salem North Carolina, New York City, and Evans' famous series from Hale County, Alabama.This is the first volume in a series highlighting the work of government photographers in the 30s and 40s. Photographers profiled include Dorothea Lange, Marion Post Wollcott, Edwin Locke, Theodor Jung, Ben Shahn, Sheldon Dick, Russell Lee, Marjory Collins, Gordon Parks, Jack Delano, John Vachon and others.

Walker Evans was one of the most important and influential artists of the twentieth century, who produced a body of photographs that continue to shape our understanding of the modern era. He worked in every genre and format, in black and white and in color, but two passions were constant: literature and the printed page. While his photographic books are among the most influential in the medium's history, Evans' more ephemeral pages remain largely unknown. From small avant-garde publications to mainstream titles such as Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, Architectural Forum, Life and Fortune he produced innovative and independent journalism, often setting his own assignments, editing, writing and designing his pages. Presenting many of his photo-essays in their entirety, Walker Evans: The Magazine Work assembles the unwritten history of this work, allowing us to see how he protected his autonomy, earned a living and found audiences far beyond the museum and gallery.