Evans was fascinated by the vernacular language of signs-billboards, theater marquees, hand-painted storefronts, graffiti, and rusted tin roadside signs. As in this picture of a tattered movie poster, he often photographed these found artifacts head-on, so that the flat surface of the sign seems to occupy the same plane as the surface of the photographic image. Here, Evans's careful cropping heightens the mystery of the original poster image by isolating the couple's terror from its source and focusing our attention on the large rip that seems to slash through the woman's head.
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[Harry Lunn to Waddell, April 24, 1984]; John C. Waddell
The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The New Vision: Photography between the World Wars. The Ford Motor Company Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art," September 23–December 31, 1989.
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. "The New Vision: Photography between the World Wars. The Ford Motor Company Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art," February 28–April 22, 1990.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art. "The New Vision: Photography between the World Wars. The Ford Motor Company Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art," May 10–July 15, 1990.
High Museum of Art. "The New Vision: Photography between the World Wars. The Ford Motor Company Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art," February 5–April 28, 1991.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. "The New Vision: Photography between the World Wars. The Ford Motor Company Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art," June 8–August 4, 1991.
IVAM, Centre Julio Gonzalez, Valencia. "The New Vision, IVAM, Centre Julio Gonzalez, Valencia," January 20, 1995–March 26, 1995.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Walker Evans," February 1–May 14, 2000.
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. "Walker Evans," June 2–September 12, 2000.
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. "Walker Evans," December 17, 2000–March 4, 2001.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Framing a Century: Master Photographers, 1840–1940," June 3–September 1, 2008.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Surface Tension," September 15, 2009–March 15, 2010.
Evans, Walker. American Photographs. New York: Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1938. no. 13.
Hambourg, Maria Morris. The New Vision: Photography between the World Wars, Ford Motor Company Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1989. no. 93.
Hambourg, Maria Morris, Doug Eklund, Mia Fineman, and Jeff L. Rosenheim. Walker Evans. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000. no. 25.
Rosenheim, Jeff L. Documentary & Anti-Graphic: Photographs by Cartier-Bresson, Walker Evans & Alvarez Bravo. Göttingen: Musée de l'Elysée, Lausanne, 2004. p. 166.
Walker Evans (American, St. Louis, Missouri 1903–1975 New Haven, Connecticut)
1943
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