Walker Evans: Photographs for the Farm Security Administration, 1935-1938

Walker Evans wasn't the most prolific of Roy Stryker's photographers; he turned in about 540 negatives (compared to 841 from Dorothea Lange) during his relatively short stay from June 1935 to 1937 and the summer 1938. This interesting book, designed as an unpaginated catalog, presents 488 photos three to a page with the images about the same size as those in Walker Evans: The Getty Museum Collection which has 168 FSA photos. The idea behind the book (first published in 1973) was to use it as a guide to ordering prints from the Library of Congress, so each photo has the LoC number, date, location and subject. This always seemed a rather ambitious project to me because the photos, though rather small and printed with a 133 screen, do give a good impression of the remarkable quality of Evans work. To achieve the book's objective a slim volume of thumbnails and LoC numbers would have been adequate. The front of the book has 64 photos, large and one to a page. The twelve FSA assignments that Evans completed are shown in historical sequence, starting with West Virgina in 1935 and ending with New York City in the summer of 1938. His famous photos used in `Let us now praise famous men' taken in Alabama 1935 and 1936 are some of 186 shown from that assignment so now you can see many wonderful alternatives of the Burroughs, Fields and Tengle families and how they lived and farmed. There plenty of books about Walker Evans and in particular his FSA work but I've always liked this one. I bought it years ago and it introduced me to his amazing contribution to Stryker's program where I think he took his finest work. ***SEE SOME INSIDE PAGES by clicking 'customer images' under the cover.