Walker Evans: The Lost Work [Hardcover]

Walker Evans (Author), Belinda Rathbone (Author), Clark Worswick (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 15, 2000

Walker Evans was perhaps the greatest "documentary artist" American has ever known. In a career that lasted forty-six years (1928-1974) Evans profoundly changed the way Americans looked at themselves, their social causes, and their country. Drawn from a largely unseen private collection-the largest private collection of Walker Evans photographs in the world-this lavishly produced volume publishes here for the first time scores of pictures that have henceforth been inaccessible to the public. Included are the familiar images of Evans's Southern work (1935-36), as well as far less familiar images of Evans's friends and fellow artists, his work in Tahiti, photographs that he made of Victorian House architecture (1930-31), and photographs done on travels to England, Cuba, Maine, Nova Scotia, Chicago and New Orleans. Authors Belinda Rathbone and Clark Worswick rise to the occasion of documenting Evans' monumental career, exploring the overlooked byways of Evans' career at a moment when a rediscovery of his life's work is taking place in both the museum world and in the world of photographic collecting. What we are presented with here is a definitive and sometimes surprising look at the photographer whose oeuvre prefigures the work of photographers and documentary artists of all stripes.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Belinda Rathbone is a photography historian who has written widely on modern photographers. In her definitive biography, Walker Evans (1995), Rathbone interviewed more than a hundred friends and colleagues of Evans's as well as his two former wives, and combed archives and letters to illuminate his singular vision and complex personality Evans carefully withheld from his photographs. Her research papers are now part of the Walker Evans Archive at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Arena Editions; 1st edition (October 15, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1892041294
• ISBN-13: 978-1892041296
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 9.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,629,442 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Secret and Excellent Documentary of America, January 5, 2003

By 

Duncan Wong (EyesCoffee.com from Hong Kong) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Walker Evans: The Lost Work (Hardcover)

'The Lost Work' refers to Walker Evans's own private collection of his B/W images - 'the prints that he chose to keep in his own print boxes for posterity'. He was probably the greatest documentary artist America has ever known. It presents the faces and lives of Americans in the late 1930s and then to the mid 1970s.

From the introduction, we can see how a photographer had struggled for his lifetime for acquiring support, and eventually his works could 'enter' museum or collectors' hand during the end of his life. Behind the images, you may have a deeper insight of this photographer. From his life, it seems very contradictory between his character and his images.

The printing of this book is excellent.