Walker Evans: Florida [Hardcover]

Robert Plunket (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 13, 2000

American photographer Walker Evans (1903-1975) is best known for his portraits of Depression-era America, a number of which were included in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941), his famous collaboration with writer James Agee. In 1942 at the behest of retired journalist Karl Bickel, Evans journeyed to Sarasota to take photographs for the Mangrove Coast, a book Bickel was writing about the long and colorful history of Florida's Gulf Coast.
Featured in Walker Evans: Florida are the surprising images Evans took during that six-week stay in the area, which constitute a little-known chapter in Evans's distinguished career. Far from stereotypical postcard pictures of sandy beaches and palm trees, Evans captured a region of contradictions. Here in the nation's seaside vacationland, Evans focused his lens on decaying architecture, crowded street scenes, retirees, and numerous images of animals, railroad cars, and circus wagons from Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus, whose winter home was Sarasota.
Accompanying the fifty-two images in Walker Evans: Florida is novelist Robert Plunket's wry account of the human and geographic landscape of Florida.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Charmingly stuffed with time-frozen memories." -- Miami Herald

"Evans' Florida photographs ... perhaps now finally will get their due." -- St. Petersburg Times

About the Author

Robert Plunket is a novelist, columnist, and actor who lives in Sarasota. He is the author of My Search for Warren Harding and Love Junkie.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 80 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (April 13, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0892365668
• ISBN-13: 978-0892365661
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 7.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,869,417 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Second Evans Title in Series a Success, April 22, 2000

By 

Rodger Kingston (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Walker Evans: Florida (Hardcover)

"Walker Evans: Florida," following on the heels of last year's "Walker Evans: Signs," is the second volume in what I hope will become a series from the J.Paul Getty Museum. Revealing as well as entertaining, it presents the Getty's holdings of Florida photographs that Evans made on assignment in 1941 for "The Mangrove Coast," with text by Karl Bickel, published the following year. This is a lesser-known body of Evans's work, somewhat overshadowed by his monumental document of the Great Depression collected in the files of the Library of Congress, and in the pages of innumerable volumes since his original "American Photographs" and "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men." The value of this small volume is that Evans's excellant Florida work is now back in print; and if his whole career is ever to be properly evaluated, then all of its facets must be fully examined. My only criticism is with the book's design and layout. As with "Walker Evans: Signs," the photographs are often guttered and bled off the edge of the page, and the type is laid out in such an artsy way that it is often confusing. Evans would not have approved. The enjoyable introductory essay by Robert Plunket adeptly balances information about Evans and West Florida, with personal experiences of the author, a long time Sarasota resident. This is a book that all serious students of Evans will want to have.