[Leica] Walker Evans, or Bigger IS Better

[Mitch Alland <malland@mac.com>]

In New York for a couple of days, today I saw the Walker Evans exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum and was reminded of a posting on LUG in which someone stated that it's worth a visit to New York just to see this show.

Although I admire Walker Evans as a great photographer, I beg to differ. This exhibition would be of interest to people interested in the history of photography, or to someone who wants to see the original prints of a great photographer but, in my view, as a show, it just doesn't work. That's because I feel that it's visually boring to see a 100-odd small photographic prints -- they're about 8x6 inches or smaller -- the same way that I would find it visually boring to see some 100 Persian miniatures, even though these little paintings may be masterpieces individually. While I think that 10 or so Persian miniatures can be magnificent, a show of a 100 of them just doesn't work.

Does that mean that the Walker Evans show should have presented some large prints of these photographs as well. No, because that would be unhistoric and untrue to how they were originally presented. Perhaps it would be more interesting to have a much more imaginatively organized show, by presenting documents and prints of other photographers of the period to create a context for the small Walker Evans prints. But the way this show is presented, I am glad that I didn't come to New York just to see it.

- --Mitch