Walker Evans Untitled (Subway Portrait), New York 1938-1941 Gelatin silver print. 4 3/4 x 7 1/4 in. (12.1 x 18.4 cm) 'The Art Institute of Chicago' collection label affixed to the reverse of the mount.
Provenance Gift of Arnold Crane, 1970 Literature The Art Institute of Chicago, The Intuitive Eye: Photographs from the David C. & Sarajean Ruttenberg Collection, pl. 16 Keller, Walker Evans The Getty Museum Collection, pls. 590 and 591 for a variant Metropolitan Museum of Art, Walker Evans pl. 110 for a variant Mora and Hill, Walker Evans The Hungry Eye, p. 223 for a variant Catalogue Essay In the winter of 1938, at the height of his acclaim, Walker Evans began a three-year project to photograph riders on the New York subway. Wearing a hidden camera with a cable release running down his sleeve, Evans photographed without a viewfinder, the lens of his camera peaking out between his coat buttons. Evans’s great contribution to American Modernism was his insistence on eliminating all self-aggrandizing artistry from his pictures in order to present only that which was in front of him: the thing itself. His subway portraits, as seen in Lots 22 and 23, in which both the framing and the subjects’ “poses” contained a great element of chance, represent Evans’ culminating rejection of the high-art tradition of Alfred Stieglitz whom he once referred to as ''a screaming aesthete.'' Read More
Walker Evans Untitled (Subway Portrait), New York 1938-1941 Gelatin silver print. 4 3/4 x 7 1/4 in. (12.1 x 18.4 cm) 'The Art Institute of Chicago' collection label affixed to the reverse of the mount.
Provenance Gift of Arnold Crane, 1970 Literature The Art Institute of Chicago, The Intuitive Eye: Photographs from the David C. & Sarajean Ruttenberg Collection, pl. 16 Keller, Walker Evans The Getty Museum Collection, pls. 590 and 591 for a variant Metropolitan Museum of Art, Walker Evans pl. 110 for a variant Mora and Hill, Walker Evans The Hungry Eye, p. 223 for a variant Catalogue Essay In the winter of 1938, at the height of his acclaim, Walker Evans began a three-year project to photograph riders on the New York subway. Wearing a hidden camera with a cable release running down his sleeve, Evans photographed without a viewfinder, the lens of his camera peaking out between his coat buttons. Evans’s great contribution to American Modernism was his insistence on eliminating all self-aggrandizing artistry from his pictures in order to present only that which was in front of him: the thing itself. His subway portraits, as seen in Lots 22 and 23, in which both the framing and the subjects’ “poses” contained a great element of chance, represent Evans’ culminating rejection of the high-art tradition of Alfred Stieglitz whom he once referred to as ''a screaming aesthete.'' Read More
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