Walker Evans

A magisterial study of celebrated photographer Walker Evans

Walker Evans (1903-75) was a great American artist photographing people and places in the United States in unforgettable ways. He is known for his work for the Farm Security Administration, addressing the Great Depression, but what he actually saw was the diversity of people and the damage of the long Civil War. In Walker Evans, renowned art historian Svetlana Alpers explores how Evans made his distinctive photographs. Delving into a lavish selection of Evans's work, Alpers uncovers rich parallels between his creative approach and those of numerous literary and cultural figures, locating Evans within the wide context of a truly international circle.

Alpers demonstrates that Evans's practice relied on his camera choices and willingness to edit multiple versions of a shot, as well as his keen eye and his distant straight-on view of visual objects. Illustrating the vital role of Evans's dual love of text and images, Alpers places his writings in conversation with his photographs. She brings his techniques into dialogue with the work of a global cast of important artists--from Flaubert and Baudelaire to Elizabeth Bishop and William Faulkner--underscoring how Evans's travels abroad in such places as France and Cuba, along with his expansive literary and artistic tastes, informed his quintessentially American photographic style.

A magisterial account of a great twentieth-century artist, Walker Evans urges us to look anew at the act of seeing the world--to reconsider how Evans saw his subjects, how he saw his photographs, and how we can see his images as if for the first time.

"A magisterial study of celebrated photographer Walker Evans"--
Her whole book is really suffused with her emotional involvement in the subject and I think it's so warm and sympathetic, and really a wonderful biography.---Joyce Carol Oates, Times Literary Supplement Podcast
Alpers's interest in the 'unique' work of Walker Evans is an interest in the 'making' of the photographs rather than in their interpretation: her approach is slow, patient, fastidious, detail-oriented, appreciative and illuminating. . . . It is really Starting from Scratch that is a 'unique' work: a close reading of classic photographs by a discerning eye (Alpers's) that conjoins the instructional with the intimate, the scholarship of the historian with the candour of the memoirist. . . . A brilliant and, indeed, thrilling final chapter . . . considers the phenomenon of 'late style' as it relates to artists other than Walker Evans---Joyce Carol Oates, Times Literary Supplement
Insightful.---Stuart Mitchner, Town Topics
[A] learned, suggestive, and handsome work. Alpers studies Evans's work employing the techniques used to critique paintings: by assessing how he framed his scenes, in the light of his printed statements and off-the-cuff remarks. Her most illuminating is the theme of detail. She focuses on what Evans focused on.---Allen D. Boyer, The Key Reporter
[A] superb book.---Richard Meyer, Artforum
Svetlana Alpers' book on Walker Evans begins, after a half title page, with reproductions of 143 of Evans' photographs . . . a silently eloquent way to say: the pictures come first. . . . Alpers focuses on [Evans's] profound connection to French culture, literary in the first place . . . and then photographic . . . to show how 'Evans always viewed his country as if from the outside and often with an ironic eye'.---Barry Schwabsky, Tourniquereview.com
[Walker Evans is] a fresh, scholarly look--complete with more than 200 images--at the seminal American photographer, this time through the lens of fine art and literature. In a lavishly illustrated narrative bolstered by impassioned research, art historian Alpers reintroduces readers to Walker Evans (1903-1975), one of America's great artistic observers . . . Alpers convincingly presents him as a new kind of poet. . . . Great American photography in a welcome new frame-- "Kirkus Reviews"
[In Walker Evans, Svetlana Alpers] takes a vivid, fresh look at the remarkable photographer whose well-known work on cities and on American rural poverty resonates today. But there is much more to see, and say. Many of the 143 plates will not be familiar, and Alpers interprets them in the context of international literature and art, inviting 'those who don't know Evans [to] discover his greatness, ' and ranking photographic achievement with literature and painting of the highest quality.-- "Harvard Magazine"
In Walker Evans: Starting from Scratch, art historian Svetlana Alpers explores the prominent 20th century documentary photographer's work and creative process. Though one might usually consider photography to be a graphic art like painting, Alpers examines Evans' love of text and the relationship between his images and works by writers including Flaubert, Baudelaire, and Faulkner, making the compelling case that literature is at the heart of his work. The book features 170 of Evans's photos, but the main reason to get Starting from Scratch is to learn more about the artist's way of seeing the world and rediscover his work with fresh eyes.-- "Photo Life Magazine"
In this extensive and detailed biography... the reader is presented with a new perspective on Walker Evans's work, rendering the presumed familiar unfamiliar in a decidedly nuanced and enjoyable way.-- "ARLIS/NA Reviews"
This 213-page book provides depth and breadth about Evans' work. Readers . . . who are curious about what drove Walker Evans to create, and to learn about what influenced him and what distinguishes him from other 20th Century photographers as it evolved will no doubt enjoy Walker Evans: Starting from Scratch. ---Caryn Hoffman, Picture this Post
Walker Evans: Starting from Scratch by Svetlana Alpers is an entire semester in one volume. . . . Her analysis of Evans' artistic life will not disappoint. . . . This biography affectionately reads like a lecture series, with professor Alpers nudging students to close-read the 143 black/white Evans photos conveniently placed at the book's beginning.---Jean Bundy, Anchorage Press
A comprehensive study. . . . Alpers shows how Evans's approach differed both from that of other photographers and from conventional assumptions about photography. . . . Intriguing interpretations of Evans's photos and work process, for both specialists and general readers.-- "Library Journal"