Walker Evans might be best known for his stark, intimate photographs of Depression-era sharecroppers across a Deep South landscape of roadside cafes and churches.
But Evans also has an extensive history as a New York City street photographer. A St. Louis native, he settled into a Bohemian life in Manhattan in the 1920s, first intending to be a writer before discovering a different kind of poetry in photography.
He captured glimpses of everyday city street life, taking pictures of people on tenement stoops and inside lunchrooms. And from 1938 to 1941, he took his camera underground and shot closeups of anonymous New Yorkers on the subway.
He shot these unsentimental subway portraits secretly, hiding the camera lens between the buttons of his coat, waiting for just the right moment to click the shutter hidden in his coat sleeve.
“Although the setting was public, he found that his subjects, unposed and lost in their own thoughts, displayed a constantly shifting medley of moods and expressions—by turns curious, bored, amused, despondent, dreamy, and dyspeptic,” states the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
“‘The guard is down and the mask is off,’ [Evans] remarked. ‘Even more than in lone bedrooms (where there are mirrors), people’s faces are in naked repose down in the subway.'”
In 1991, The New York Times reviewed a National Gallery exhibit of Evans’ subway photos. “Evans makes no particular political argument through his subway pictures,” the article states.
“Instead he presents a cross section of people, unposed and anonymous, forming what he called a lineup of faces.”
It wasn’t until 1966 when the subway portraits were published in Many Are Called, a book with an introduction by James Agee, who collaborated with Evans on his 1939 portrait of tenant families, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.
Viewing these naked, powerful images today, they demonstrate that subway riding in 1938 was pretty similar to today: a dance of looking away, getting lost in dreams or worries, busying yourself with a newspaper, or finding yourself the object of an off-putting subway stare.
[Photographs copyright Walker Evans Archive, Metropolitan Museum of Art]
Tags: Many Are Called Walker Evans, New York City 1930s subway photos, New York City street photos, New York City subway photos, New York in the 1930s, street photographer New York, Walker Evans
June 9, 2014 at 5:53 am |
I read a novel about these photos a few years ago. Sadly I can’t remember what it was called.
June 9, 2014 at 12:14 pm |
I think the guy in the fourth picture knew he was up to something.
June 9, 2014 at 3:18 pm |
He’s giving the subway glare . . . it’s creepy!
June 9, 2014 at 8:20 pm |
What are you looking at, punk?
June 9, 2014 at 11:15 pm |
I read a novel that involved the museum show of the pictures. Lovely story about reversal of fortunes. Cannot remember the name of it either and it’s driving me mad.
June 11, 2014 at 6:39 pm |
that’s the one I read too!
June 11, 2014 at 6:52 pm |
I had a search in my local Library catalogue, found it!!
The book is Rules of civility, Amor Towles
October 12, 2015 at 6:55 am |
[…] around other parts of Manhattan in the 1930s as well, like on the subway, where he surreptitiously shot random subway riders staring, reading, or lost in their […]
September 12, 2016 at 8:14 am |
[…] street photographers before him (think Walker Evans during the Depression), Kubrick decided to take his camera underground and shoot the people riding the […]
December 13, 2018 at 10:04 pm |
[…] en 1966, Walker Evans realizó su Many are called, también en el metro de Nueva York. Estas fotografías fueron tomadas con una cámara de 35mm […]