Walker Evans Untitled (Subway Portrait), New York 1938-1941 Gelatin silver print. 5 x 7 3/4 in. (12.7 x 19.7 cm) 'The Art Institute of Chicago' collection label affixed to the reverse of the mount.
Provenance Gift of Arnold Crane, 1970 Literature Keller, Walker Evans The Getty Museum Collection, pl. 606 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. 5 x 7 3/4 in. (12.7 x 19.7 cm) 'The Art Institute of Chicago' collection label affixed to the reverse of the mount.
Provenance Gift of Arnold Crane, 1970 Literature Keller, Walker Evans The Getty Museum Collection, pl. 606 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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.jpg "Source: Christie's")
.jpg "Source: Christie's")
