[Leica] Walker Evans

[Doug Cooper <visigoth@echonyc.com>]

I just returned from the vast Walker Evans retrospective at the Met, and
I'm feeling suitably humble.  I suppose we're all familiar with his
important work from the thirties, but I was equally moved by the polaroids
he made when he was seventy or so and frail.  I suspect that Evans's color
work will be seriously reassessed as a result of this show.  He himself
didn't have much respect for it, but I think it's ground-breaking.

And it's uncanny the degree to which his various experiments anticipate
work some thirty years later:  Arman, Ben and the Nouveau Realists; Arbus
and the grotesque; Warhol.

Those farm portraits from the thirties were shot mostly with a view
camera, but some were taken with his Leica, including the snapshot of the
child sleeping on the floor, covered by a cloth to keep off flies.

I'd love to know details of his equipment.  Especially the angle device
that he and Shahn used to photograph surreptitiously.  Was this home-made,
or can I find one?

This show is probably worth a trip to Manhattan, if any of you are
contemplating one. 


Doug Cooper