By Denise Richardson
Images by Walker Evans, whose photographs captured American life in the Great Depression, will be shown at the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown starting July 18.
``Walker Evans: Carbon and Silver'' will present the photographer's work in his original gelatin silver prints and in large-scale modern ink-jet prints made from digital files.
The precision of digital technology faithfully translates Evans' drive for clarity in presenting information rather than creating stylized fine art prints, according to a media release from the Fenimore Art Museum.
The exhibition will run through Dec. 31.
``I was really thrilled to see it was coming to the museum,'' Richard Walker, a commercial photographer who lives in Schenevus, said Sunday.
``I'm particularly excited about the digital reinterpretation of his negatives and prints,'' Walker said, whose work appeared in a show titled ``Rural Icons'' at the Fenimore Art Museum last year. ``Simply put, digital sees details and shadows differently, and very often, better than film. This is a wonderful opportunity to see his iconic images `in a new light.'''
Evans was the first photographer to have a solo exhibition in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 1938. His work is in collections at that museum and at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
Walker Evans was born in St. Louis, Mo., in 1903, and died in New Haven, Conn., in 1975. He began to photograph in the late 1920s, taking snapshots during a European trip, according to a biography. He published his first images in 1930.
During the Great Depression, Evans took photographs for the Resettlement Administration, later known as the Farm Security Administration, documenting workers and architecture in the Southeastern states. In 1936, he traveled with the writer James Agee to illustrate an article on tenant farm families for Fortune magazine; a book, ``Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,'' came out of this collaboration.
In 1965, he left Fortune magazine after 20 years as a staff photographer to become a professor of photography and graphic design at Yale University, where he taught until 1974.
``Carbon and Silver'' was curated by John T. Hill, who taught with Evans at the Yale School of Art and who was the executor of Evans' estate.
As a federally employed photographer in 1935""36, Evans was obliged to promptly submit his negatives, if not his prints, to the Farm Security Administration. Later, that archive was passed to the Library of Congress. Print quality from that agency varied greatly depending on workloads and the ability of technicians, presenters said. After many years of hard use, the original negatives have been retired.
The majority of the exhibition's images are ones Evans selected for two of his most important books, ``American Photographs'' (1938) and ``Let Us Now Praise Famous Men'' (1941), presenters said. The source of most of the images in this exhibition is the Library of Congress.
Evans emerged as one of the most talented photographers of the Farm Security Administration, presenters said, and his work remains among the most powerful testaments of the Great Depression. By documenting details of American life, he reflected the spirit of the people and places he photographed, and his work during his time with the FSA is credited with influencing the development of the history of American photography, according to background from the Fenimore Art Museum.
Walker said he salutes the Fenimore Art Museum for presenting this and other exhibits featuring ``photographers of note.''
``We are bombarded daily with hundreds of photographs, most of them forgettable,'' Walker said. ``The work of Walker Evans still resonates.''
Evans likely would be excited by digital technology and how it can expand the details and depth of images, said Walker, who wrote a paper in college about ``Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.''
Walker said Evans' influence on him was to ``be honest and unsentimental'' about portraying a subject, not letting the role of photographer interfere with the focus.
The exhibition at the Fenimore Art Museum is made possible in part by The Lisette Model Foundation and The Max and Victoria Dreyfus Foundation Inc. For more information about the local exhibition, visit www.fenimoreartmuseum.org.
____
If you have good news you'd like to share, call Managing Editor Cary Brunswick at 432-1000 or (800) 721-1000, ext. 217; fax him at 432-5707; e-mail him at cary@thedailystar.com; or write to him at P.O. Box 250, Oneonta, NY 13820.
