Walker Evans [Hardcover]

James R. Mellow (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 20, 1999

Walker Evans (1903–1975) is best known as one of the leading documentary photographers of the Depression Era, and for his photographs of Alabama sharecroppers in James Agee’s Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. His FSA photographs have become icons in the American consciousness, and are perhaps the most influential body of photographic work in this century.But Evans was not the propagandist for social causes he was presumed to be; he was, instead, a fastidious observer, recording, simply, the way things were. His instinctive aversion to “artiness” contrasted him sharply from his senior Alfred Stieglitz, and his immediate contemporary, Ansel Adams. Evans’ eye took him toward the dusty particulars, the backroads of American life, its rundown mill towns, roadside stands, torn movie posters and advertisements for departed minstrel shows. He developed a peculiarly American vernacular, his particular trademark that makes an Evans photograph almost instantly recognizable.With unrestricted access to all of Evans’ diaries, letters, work logs and contact sheets, James R. Mellow has produced one of the most finely wrought portraits of a major American artist ever. Also, it is a deeply informed cultural history of the 1930s and ’40s and a lively account of friendships and influences with the likes of Lincoln Kirstein and James Agee.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Before his death in 1997, James Mellow left one last gracefully written, sensitively nuanced biography to add to a shelf containing National Book Award winner Nathaniel Hawthorne in His Times and a remarkable trilogy on seminal figures of the Lost Generation. Mellow's biography of photographer Walker Evans (1903-1977) is just as nimble in making connections between an individual life and the cultural trends it reflected and affected. Although he will always be best remembered for the austere images of Depression-era poverty that accompanied James Agee's prose in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, Evans was a nondidactic social realist. "I love to find American vernacular," he once remarked, and Mellow's subtle analysis of Evans's work shows his fastidiously uninflected photographic style being mistaken for a "documentary." In fact, the images' psychological intensity and formal sophistication make the photographs far more than simple records of a time or place. Mellow does not neglect Evans's turbulent personal life, including two divorces and a drinking problem, and is astute about the role in his success of collaborators like Agee, "more ambitious, more hard-headed, more informed about opportunities and better placed to make use of them." Each page and elegantly turned sentence proclaims Mellow's mastery of the biographical craft; he will be sorely missed. --Wendy Smith

From Publishers Weekly

When NBA-winning biographer James R. Mellow (Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein & Company) died in 1997, he left behind an unfinished manuscript on the life of American photographer Walker Evans. That manuscript makes up the bulk of this book, and chronicles, in abundant detail, the first 53 years of Evanss life: 16 pages of Mellows notes conclude the volume by outlining Evanss activities from 1955 to 1977. This dense, well-documented study should satisfy anyone seeking a comprehensive account of Evanss early life, influence and photographic achievement, crowned by Evanss one-man show at the Museum of Modern Art in 1938 (the first photographer to be so honored) and by his collaboration with James Agee, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941). Mellow traces Evanss modern style with an expert eye, finding its source in the French photographer Eugene Atget, and its birth in 1926, the year Evans (who had wanted to be a writer) spent in Paris. Mellow glosses over a key incident in Evanss early years: when Evans was 15, his father, a Midwestern advertising executive, moved in with the familys next-door neighbor, neither divorcing Evanss mother nor marrying the neighbor. This duplicitous arrangement surely helped produce an adolescent who grew up to value candor in his photography. Mellows analyses of the photographs he reproduces, however, and Hilton Kramers excellent introduction, help explain why his work seemed so modern, and what kinds of pleasure it can give us now. Evans the man seems to have been an Anglophilic snob and a coward. His final two decadeswhich he spent as a professor at Yalehave already been chronicled in Jerry Thompsons poignant The Last Years of Walker Evans; as those years didnt produce Evanss best work, their absence from Mellows manuscript hardly reduces his achievement. 150 b&w photos.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 656 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; 1St Edition edition (May 20, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 046509077X
• ISBN-13: 978-0465090778
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 7 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,297,065 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book is a complete view of the Evans work and life., August 17, 1999

By 

Leonardo Solorzano - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Walker Evans (Hardcover)

James Mellow performs an excellent work exploring the life of Evans. The photographic documents are great. The book covers all he Work of Evans, including his travels on Mexico, Cuba and the work for the Farm Security Administration. This biography explores his primary influences in Paris and all that creates a master af the photography of the century.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars BEWARE! Unfinished business, December 2, 2009

By 

Photoman "D-76" (Pennsylvania, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Walker Evans (Paperback)

This is an exhaustive bio . . . but the author, James Mellow died before finishing the book. I read it with great interest, but because of this unfortunate occurance, the book is unfinished. So, if you're looking for a birth to death bio of one of my photo hero's, I suggest you go some where else.