Historical Documentary Photographer

WALKER EVANS

1903 - 1975

He was an American photographer best known for his work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) documenting the effects of the Great Depression.

Much of Evans's work from the FSA period uses the large-format, 8x10-inch camera.

 From the mid-1935’s to early 1937 Evans worked for a regular salary as a member of the so-called “historical unit” of the Farm Security Administration (FSA; earlier, the Resettlement Administration), an agency of the Department of Agriculture. His assignment was to provide a photographic survey of rural America, primarily in the South. To the degree that the function of the unit was ever defined, its goal was less history than a form of political persuasion.

About FSA

 Initially created as the Resettlement Administration (RA) in 1935 as part of the New Deal in the United States, the Farm Security Administration (FSA) was an effort during the Depression to combat American rural poverty.

The FSA stressed "rural rehabilitation" efforts to improve the lifestyle of sharecroppers, tenants, very poor landowning farmers, and a program to purchase submarginal land owned by poor farmers and resettle them in group farms on land more suitable for efficient farming. Critics, including the Farm Bureau strongly opposed the FSA as an experiment in collectivizing agriculture — that is, in bringing farmers together to work on large government-owned farms using modern techniques under the supervision of experts. The program failed because the farmers wanted ownership; after the Conservative coalition took control of Congress it transformed the FSA into a program to help poor farmers buy land, and continues in operation in the 21st century as the Farmers Home Administration.

I have chose the above pictures because they show the families and how they are coping through the depression and current climate. As you can see some of them do not even have shoes, is this because they can't afford them or just haven't put them on.

They all look under nourished, but yet they all seem to some family comforts, ie. cigarettes, a dog and pictures on the wall.

 

Quotes

He said that his goal as a photographer was to make pictures that are "literate, authoritative, transcendent"

Images sourced from:-

shelleypowers.burningbird.net

hopwalkerevans.wordpress.com