Corner of State and Randolph Streets, Chicago
Walker Evans American
Not on view
Walker Evans is known primarily for his photographs of the American South during the Great Depression and for his collaboration with the writer James Agee on their groundbreaking book, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941). During World War II and in the following decades, Evans worked for Fortune, the deluxe business magazine still in print today. To create this 1946 photograph, Evans returned to his childhood home and placed himself in the middle of a busy crosswalk at lunchtime. He focused on a pair of pedestrians in blinding sunlight, crossing past Chicago’s famous department store Marshall Field’s. With its intense, lower-than-eye-level gaze, the photograph recalls the artist’s maxim: "Stare. Die knowing something. You are not here long."
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