Biography provided by Focal press
 
The Godfather of large format American 20th century documentary photography, who was committed to straight, unadorned, black and white documentation. He established his transparent, unheroic, clinical style as a photographer for the Farm Security Administration (1935-1938). His book American Photographs (1938) established the idea that looking at photographs in a book is fundamentally different than looking at photographs on the wall and that how the photographs were sequenced was critical in establishing meaning. It also revealed his affection for photographing signs (text), which often self-labeled the photograph. Evans' self-effacing approach with its edge of pessimism, made people believe in the power of the plain photograph. His second book with James Agee, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941), was illustrated with Evans' unsentimental portraits of Alabama sharecroppers. His puritanical objectivity and economy of composition made the hardship of their situation self-evident yet preserved their dignity. From 1945 to 1965 he was a staff writer and photographer for Fortune.
 
(Author: RH)
 
Michael Peres (Editor-in-Chief), 2007, Focal Encyclopedia of Photography, 4th edition, (Focal Press) [ISBN-10: 0240807405, ISBN-13: 978-0240807409] (Used with permission)
 
Approved biography
Courtesy of the Victoria & Albert Museum (London, UK)
 
Walker Evans is one of the most celebrated American photographers. During the Great Depression of the 1930's, he worked for the American government's Farm Security Administration programme, and created some of the most potent and memorable images of the era. His documentary style focussed on the details of individual human lives in unforgiving circumstances. "I am for man's work", he said; "nature bores me as an art form". Evans went on to take pictures of people on the New York subway using a hidden camera, a series on tools and Polaroid images of rural and urban Americana.
 
This biography is courtesy and copyright of the Victoria & Albert Museum and is included here with permission.
 
Wikipedia