Tag Archives: Walker Evans

Campany on Killip

“Work of the very highest standards never belongs entirely to its moment. Its genesis cannot be predicted or accounted for, nor its resonance over time. Its force and complexity elude comprehension because its mysteries are as vital as its revelations.… Continue reading

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Portraiture and tradition: Walker Evans & Richard Rothman.

“We dwell with satisfaction upon the poet’s difference from his predecessors, especially his immediate predecessors; we endeavour to find something that can be isolated in order to be enjoyed. Whereas if we approach a poet without this prejudice we shall… Continue reading

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Simon on Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

A suburban boy’s father marks up his English essays, explaining both the wit and weaknesses of leading sentences with gerunds. He tells stories of fierce heroes, word warriors: Broun, who loved the street parade, and Pegler, who sat next to… Continue reading

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From “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men”, by James Agee & Walker Evans

“Every few minutes George would get up and open the door a foot or so, and it showed always the same picture: that end of the hallway mud and under water, where the planks lay flush to the ground: the… Continue reading

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Trachtenberg on Evans & Atget

 ”Neither Evans nor Atget presumes to put us in touch with a pure reality, a thing in itself; their cropping always affirms its arbitrariness and contingency. And the world they characteristically picture is a world already made over into meaning… Continue reading

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Gossage on photography

In a near-hour long discussion with the curator of Photography at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, John Gossage speaks with an affable sort of incisiveness about the genesis of his signature work “The Pond“, the rationale behind his particular way… Continue reading

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