Labor Anonymous

Walker Evans is one of the most important photographers of the 20th century and has influenced contemporary art beyond his medium until today. In 1938 the Museum of Modern Art in New York dedicated its first ever solo photography exhibition to Evans's work, and he has shaped America's image of itself particularly through his photographs of the Great Depression. The publication "Walker Evans: Labor Anonymous" is the first in-depth investigation into a series of the same name, which Evans published in Fortune magazine in 1946. On a Saturday afternoon in Detroit, Evans positioned himself with his Rolleiflex camera on the sidewalk and photographed pedestrians, mostly laborers, in his characteristically clear and unadorned way - an aesthetic he consciously described as the "documentary style". As in his earlier series, e.g. in the famous "Subway Portraits" from the New York underground, his subjects were often unaware they were being photographed, but some of the pedestrians also looked straight into the camera. Representing much more than a simple typology, this photographic series does not offer a fixed image of humankind or class. source: www.buchhandlung-walther-koenig.de