There’s an enjoyable article titled “On the Path of Walker Evans” by Laura Holson in the Escapes section of The New York Times today. The author travels through the small towns in Alabama where Evans, during the depression era, took photographs that offer poignant social commentary from that period.
The slideshow that accompanies this article contains ”Roadside Stand near Birmingham,” pictured above. As I was viewing this image, I was so focused on the boys lifting watermelons and text covering the building in the foreground that for minutes I didn’t notice the little girl posing inside the dimly-lit doorway.
There’s an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC right now (mentioned in the article) that attempts to link Evans’s artistic inspiration with the postcards he collected. It’s a small show, but honestly the sheer number of postcards hanging on the wall makes it impossible to view them all without going blurry-eyed. The postcard displays sort of overwhelm the few Evans photographs being exhibited…but it’s worth visiting if you’re a big black and white photo fan.
