On View
Not on viewObject number2006.1
Farmhouse, Westchester County, New York
Artist
Walker Evans
(American, 1903-1975)
Date1936
Mediumgelatin silver print
Dimensionsimage: 4 3/4 × 6 5/8 in. (12.1 × 16.8 cm)
mount: 18 in. × 14 3/4 in. (45.7 × 37.5 cm)
mat: 20 × 16 in. (50.8 × 40.6 cm)
mount: 18 in. × 14 3/4 in. (45.7 × 37.5 cm)
mat: 20 × 16 in. (50.8 × 40.6 cm)
Credit LineElisabeth Claire Lahti Fund
Exhibition History"A Legacy for Kalamazoo: Works Acquired through the Elisabeth Claire Lahti Fund, 1998 - 2012," KIA (Sept. 29, 2012 - Jan. 20, 2013).Label TextImages like this photograph of a farmhouse and automobile exemplify the quotidian subject matter and unassuming but sharp style that helped Walker Evans become one of the most acclaimed American photographers of the 20th century. From the late 1920s into the early 1970s, Evans’ camera captured thousands upon thousands of regular people and places as he traveled across the United States, humanizing everyday Americans and their experiences in an artistic practice that stood out from other photographers’ focus on famous people, the news of the day, or aesthetic experimentation. Evans is especially celebrated for his work in the Great Depression, when his work was often sponsored by the Resettlement Administration (later called the Farm Security Administration), a New Deal agency designed to bring attention to rural communities and provide them with necessary aid amidst changing economic conditions. In the same year that he made Farmhouse, Westchester County, New York, Evans also completed perhaps his most famous project, a collaboration with author James Agee on the book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, in which Evans photographs documented the struggles of an impoverished sharecropping family in rural Alabama with empathy and dignity. Farmhouse also proved to be an influential photograph – it was included in Evans’ landmark 1930 Museum of Modern Art exhibition, American Photographs, whose accompanying catalogue remains an important guide for photographers even today.
