In the late 1930s Evans began bringing a hidden camera into the New York subway. The lens of his camera peeking through the buttons of his coat, he would photograph his fellow passengers on what he called the “swaying sweatbox.” Evans’s fellow photographers Rudy Burckhardt and Dan Weiner also regularly captured images of New York subway commuters, many of whom were working-class people. These photos helped bolster the mission of the Photo League, a cooperative (of which Burckhardt and Weiner were members) that formed in 1936 with a commitment to progressive social reform.
2022
Kids label from 2022
Have you ever taken someone’s photo without them noticing? Evans secretly photographed people while riding the New York City subway with his friend and fellow photographer Helen Levitt. The photos capture people reading or lost in their own thoughts. What do you notice about how these riders look? Imagine what they might be thinking.
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Walker Evans
American, 1903–1975 368 works onlineIn a review of Walker Evans’s first career retrospective , critic Hilton Kramer noted, “Our experience of an Evans photograph may begin with an admiration for its design and a delight in its subject; it ends, however, with an overwhelming sense of the photographer’s own unmistakable temperament.
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