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Amateur Photographer
Product Description
Walker Evans (1903-1975) ranks with Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen and Paul Strand as one of America's greatest photographers. When originally published in 1994, Walker Evans: The Hungry Eye was the first book to survey every significant aspect of the artist's oeuvre. This reduced-format version, identical in content to the previous volume, includes 300 beautiful duotone photographs. Evans was largely self-educated and began photographing regularly in 1927, using a small hand-held camera. He specialized in the life of the street - carefully observed views of American architecture, the roadside, and the people who lived in the nation's villages, towns and cities. Beginning with Evans's early abstractions, continuing through his three-year involvement with the Farm Security Administration and his breakthrough exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and concluding with the artist's experimentation with colour late in his life, Walker Evans: The Hungry Eye remains the most complete and authoritative view of this American photographic master.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book surveys the long career of Walker Evans - from the 1920s to the 1970s. His photographic projects may be from different periods and have different themes, but the common denominator is always Evans' direct - and often brutal - approach to reality in the spirit of Flaubert and Baudelaire, whom Evans greatly admired. Contrary to the American tradition of lyrical landscapes in photography Evans depicts the industrial civilization of his country through his photographs of urban environments with their signs and other manmade artifacts. The frontal impersonal viewpoint is his, whether he depicts decaying architecture in the Deep South or photograph people on the subway in New York with a hidden camera. Here he avoids interaction between the photographer and his subjects and thus is able to record people as they really are with his particular sense of wit.
I really recommend this book as an introduction to one of the great American documentary photographers. It is well written and the pictures in the book are of high quality being printed directly from the original negatives.
I really recommend this book as an introduction to one of the great American documentary photographers. It is well written and the pictures in the book are of high quality being printed directly from the original negatives.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a useful treatment but this cheap edition is just too small for many of the pictures to be visible at all. Almost all the images are reproduced small, really small, but some (a significant number) are no bigger than postage stamps. If the book is at all valuable to you, you are going to wish you had a better -- bigger -- edition.
Do I regret my purchase? Sort of. But I do have many other books with decent reproductions of Evans's work in my library.
Do I regret my purchase? Sort of. But I do have many other books with decent reproductions of Evans's work in my library.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This book would make a good way to dip a toe in the water of Evans' earlier work. This is where Evans developed his head-on documentary style; he photograped 20s/30s America's unglamorous side, and found charm and grace amongst the mundane without ever getting sentimental.
On a practical level, the book is small-ish but it's just about big enough for the pictures to work. The main section of plates are printed single-sided, with no nasties like splitting across pages. It opens reasonably flat if you pull a bit, so you can enjoy the pictures without getting a band of reflected light where the page bends. Printing quality is OK: the pictures look like they're made from old prints which were good in their time; they don't quite have the finesse or punch you'd get with modern prints or negative scans.
Frankly, I think the title is misleading. It should be "Walker Evans, The Early Work". Most of the pictures here are from the period up to 1936 or so, i.e. the stuff that made his reputation. That's a shame because Evans is notable as an artist who didn't peak then fade, he kept on doing good work and exploring new avenues throughout his life. The introductory essay -- high-flown but illuminating reading -- makes much of this. And I've seen some very good post-1936 photos in exhibitions. His New York subway candids, his series of photos from moving trains, and his later colour pictures as a photographer-at-large for Fortune magazine are all a match for the run of this book. But you won't find them here.
Still, if you want a look at the pictures that made Walker Evans a major photographer, this is decent quality at a very good price. And there are some real stunners in here, a couple of the great photos of all time. But you'll be needing a few more books if you get hooked.
On a practical level, the book is small-ish but it's just about big enough for the pictures to work. The main section of plates are printed single-sided, with no nasties like splitting across pages. It opens reasonably flat if you pull a bit, so you can enjoy the pictures without getting a band of reflected light where the page bends. Printing quality is OK: the pictures look like they're made from old prints which were good in their time; they don't quite have the finesse or punch you'd get with modern prints or negative scans.
Frankly, I think the title is misleading. It should be "Walker Evans, The Early Work". Most of the pictures here are from the period up to 1936 or so, i.e. the stuff that made his reputation. That's a shame because Evans is notable as an artist who didn't peak then fade, he kept on doing good work and exploring new avenues throughout his life. The introductory essay -- high-flown but illuminating reading -- makes much of this. And I've seen some very good post-1936 photos in exhibitions. His New York subway candids, his series of photos from moving trains, and his later colour pictures as a photographer-at-large for Fortune magazine are all a match for the run of this book. But you won't find them here.
Still, if you want a look at the pictures that made Walker Evans a major photographer, this is decent quality at a very good price. And there are some real stunners in here, a couple of the great photos of all time. But you'll be needing a few more books if you get hooked.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Walk through with Evans
Photofile produce wonderful books, and this is no exception.
Walker Evans is a particular favourite, and Photofile have produced a documented selection of 63 of his... Read more
Walker Evans is a particular favourite, and Photofile have produced a documented selection of 63 of his... Read more
Published 15 months ago by M. J. Clenton
smaller than imagined
A great overview of the career of Walker Evens. Good production but the small format diminishes the images in places
Published on 1 April 2009 by Messenger
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