The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Art Object

Faking It Symposium: Social Documentary and Pictorial Manipulation

The symposium "Truth, Lies, and Photographs" was presented in conjunction with the exhibition Faking It: Manipulated Photography before Photoshop, on view October 11, 2012, through January 27, 2013. In this talk, Miles D. Orvell, Professor of English and American Studies, Temple University, discusses parallels between H. P. Robinson, a pictorial photographer, and W. Eugene Smith, a social documentary photographer. Both photographers, despite working in different genres of photography, manipulated the images while photographing them, sometimes asking participants to pose or repeat activities over and over again.

Part Three of Seven

Recorded November 2, 2012

The exhibition is made possible by Adobe.
This program is made possible by Joyce Frank Menschel.

Video/Audio (1)

James Nares: Street
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Subway Portrait

Walker Evans (American, St. Louis, Missouri 1903–1975 New Haven, Connecticut)

Date:: May 27, 1938
Medium:: Gelatin silver print
Dimensions:: 12.3 x 18.6 cm (4 13/16 x 7 5/16 in.)
Classification:: Photographs
Credit Line:: Gift of Arnold H. Crane, 1972
Accession Number:: 1972.742.42

This artwork is not on display

Signatures, Inscriptions, and Markings

Inscription: Inscribed in unknown hand in pencil on print, recto LR in margin: "3"; photographer's stamp on print, verso UC: "WALKER EVANS"; collector's stamp on print, verso LR: "COLLECTION // ARNOLD H. CRANE, CHICAGO, U.S.A."; inscribed in pencil in hand of Arnold H. Crane, verso LR: "withdrawn 12/71 AHC"
Provenance

Walker Evans; Arnold H. Crane
Notes

The reproduction in Many Are Called is a severely cropped version of this photograph. For the book, Evans reworked the picture into a vertical format and shows only the left figure. Perhaps to balance the new composition, he includes more of the subway map above the passenger's head.
See also
Who
Walker Evans (8,289)
What
Photographs (32,550)

Gelatin silver prints (8,690)
Where
North and Central America (81,404)

United States (78,109)
When
A.D. 1900-present (77,516)
In the Museum
Photographs (29,384)
Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History
Kodak and the Rise of Amateur Photography

Walker Evans (1903–1975)

Early Documentary Photography

The United States and Canada, 1900 A.D.–present

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Faking It Symposium: Social Documentary and Pictorial Manipulation

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Subway Portrait

Walker Evans (American, St. Louis, Missouri 1903–1975 New Haven, Connecticut)

Met Media

Met Kids

Met Store