Walker Evans

Walker Evans (November 3, 1903 – April 10, 1975)  was an American photographer best known for his work for the Farm Security Administration documenting the effects of the Great Depression.

Quotes

 * I'm often asked by students how a photographer gets over the fear and uneasiness in many people about facing a camera, and I just say that any sensitive man is bothered by a thing like that unless the motive is so strong and the belief in what he’s doing is so strong that it doesn’t matter. The important thing is to do the picture. And I advise people who are bothered by this to cure it by saying to themselves, what I’m doing is harmless to these people really, and there’s no malevolence in it and there’s no deception in it, and it is done in a great tradition, examples of which are Daumier and Goya. Daumier’s Third Class Carriage is a kind of snapshot of some actual people sitting in a railway carriage in France in eighteen-something.
 * As quoted in: Bruce Jackson (1987) Fieldwork, p. 87


 * It is the way to educate your eyes, and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop.
 * In: Tom Ang (2010), The Complete Photographer. p. 65

Quotes about Walker Evans

 * When I first looked at Walker Evans's photographs, I thought of something Malraux wrote: "To transform destiny into awareness." One is embarrassed to want so much for oneself. But, how else are you going to justify your failure and your effort?
 * Robert Frank Art Is the Highest Form of Hope & Other Quotes by Artists by Phaidon (2016)