28 October 2014
Looking back over the career of Walker Evans signifies revisiting the stages in the evolution of American documentary photography in the second half of the 20th century, and recognizing the seeds of many of the principal tendencies that have developed since, on both sides of the Atlantic. Evans gave a face to the Great Depression and focused his gaze on the vernacular landscape, on the inadvertent aesthetics of the tenements, advertising signs and gas pumps that populate provincial America. He proposed going beyond the quest for beauty in photography and seeking instead a language able to ask questions about places rather than celebrate them. The exhibition A Life’s Work presents over 200 of Evans’s original prints, dating from between 1928 and 1974, that offer a glimpse of his long exploration of the changes taking place in the US, along with his trips to Tahiti and Cuba, the faces of passengers on the New York subway captured with a hidden camera and the many reportages he carried out for the magazine Fortune. A magnificent collection of features, times and places.
Walker Evans, A Life’s Work
Martin-Gropius-Bau
Berlino
25 luglio – 9 novembre 2014
Walker Evans, Young Women Outside Clothing Store, 1934–35. Lunn Gallery Stamp (1975). © Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Walker Evans, Girl In French Quarter. New Orleans, February – March 1935. Lunn Gallery Stamp (1975). © Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Walker Evans, Crowd In Public Square, 1930s. Lunn Gallery Stamp (1975). © Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Walker Evans, Interior View of Heliker/Lahotan House Walpole, Maine, 1962. Collection of Clark and Joan Worswick. © Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Walker Evans, Interior View of Robert Frank’s House Nova Scotia, 1969 – 71. Collection of Clark and Joan Worswick. © Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Walker Evans, Façade of House with Large Numbers Denver, Colorado, August 1967. Collection of Clark and Joan Worswick. © Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Walker Evans, Robert Frank Nova Scotia, 1969 – 71. Collection of Clark and Joan Worswick. © Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Walker Evans, Barn Nova Scotia, 1969 – 71. Collection of Clark and Joan Worswick. © Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Walker Evans, Pabst Blue Ribbon Sign. Chicago, Illinois, 1946. Collection of Clark and Joan Worswick. © Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Walker Evans, Berenice Abbott. Portfolio Print 1929–30. Blind Stamp “Walker Evans Archive I” (1974). © Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.