BOOK FORMAT Hardcover, 9.5 x 10 in. / 170 pgs / 50 duotone.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 3/22/2016 Active
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: SPRING 2016 p. 21
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9781938922947TRADE List Price: $50.00 CDN $67.50
AVAILABILITY In stock
"The cropping of the images and the forward momentum of the striding men and women, along with their relaxed, end-of-the-day body language is a much freer and freeing set of images. The influence of Paul Strand’s Wall Street, New York (1915) looms large here, but where Strand’s magisterial image flattens the workers to struggling shadows against an intransigent backdrop, Evans’s photographs affirm these workers as vibrant social beings."
Edited by Thomas Zander. Text by David Campany, Heinz Liesbrock, Jerry L. Thompson.
Walker Evans shot the photographs collected in Labor Anonymous as an assignment for Fortune magazine, which published a small selection of 20 images in its November 1946 issue, under the title "On a Saturday Afternoon in Detroit." Until now, however, the entire series of 50 photographs has never been reproduced. Evans’ extraordinary serial studies of the facial expressions and postures of Detroit workers walking the city’s streets are fascinating both as portraiture and as a surprising dimension of his photographic style. Shooting passersby against a plywood backdrop as they crossed his field of vision from distant right to close left (some noticing him, most not), with the light striking and modeling their features, Evans found that what he was creating with these images was "the physiognomy of a nation." This book compiles the photographs, contact sheets, small-version printlets, Evans’ annotations to newspaper clippings, drafts for an unpublished text, telegrams and every available print Evans made, along with the Fortune spread as published. Labor Anonymous captures a long-vanished moment in American history, and a crucial project in Evans’ oeuvre. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Walker Evans (1903–75) took up photography in 1928. His book collaboration with James Agee, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941), which portrayed the lives of three white tenant families in southern Alabama during the Depression, has become one of that era’s most defining documents. Evans joined the staff of Time magazine in 1945, and shortly after moved to Fortune magazine, where he stayed until 1965. That year, he became a professor of photography at the Yale University School of Art. Evans died at his home in Old Lyme, Connecticut, in 1975.
Featured image is reproduced from Walker Evans: Labor Anonymous.
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Fotoblog
Jeffrey Ladd
Representing much more than a simple typology, this photographic series does not offer a preconceived image of humankind or class, but – as foreshadowed in its ambiguous title – encourages critical reflection on such concepts.
The New Yorker, Photo Booth
Katie Ryder
Apparent now are the open threads of story... and the sometimes painterly compositions, but, above all, the jumping static charge of reality. There is no longer the strange implication of taxonomy but only people, released to themselves.
It's Nice That
Giles Duley
For me Walker Evans is the master…. I could have picked half a dozen books by him, but Labor Anonymous gets it. It was shot in 1946 and yet it is still so modern and relevant. It’s a series of 50 images shot as workers in Detroit walked to work. A simple background, the camera never moves and most don’t even see the camera – all studies of the facial expressions and postures of life. Amazing.
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Shot on assignment for Fortune magazine in 1946, this Walker Evans photograph of an unknown Detroit office worker is reproduced from Labor Anonymous, just out from D.A.P. Publishing and Walther König. "When I knew him, Evans was beset by troubles of all kinds," Jerry L Thompson writes, "money troubles, tax troubles, marriage troubles (he divorced a second time in 1972), health troubles, advancing age, declining strength: the full catastrophe that flesh is heir to. As he approached 70, most onlookers would have taken him (even by the standards of that time) to be at least a decade older. Yet every time he walked out to start his day he was ready to be an artist. Every day had some work in it—for Evans, work meant being an artist—and the work got done even if every practical concern—what ordinary people call work—fell by the wayside." continue to blog
Featured image is reproduced from Labor Anonymous, D.A.P. Publishing and Walther König's new collection of Walker Evans' eloquent but little-known street portraits of Detroit factory workers. David Campany ends his remarkable closing essay, "As single photographs and as arranged groupings Evans’ portraits are among the boldest and most troubling ever made. Others would follow his existential path. Think of the subway photographs by Bruce Davidson, Luc Delahaye, Martin Parr or Michael Wolff. Think of the street portraiture of Diane Arbus, Ken Ohara, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Beat Streuli or Eamonn Doyle. But really Evans had already gone to the abyss and looked in. What did he see? The modern anonymity of his fellow citizens, and the modern anonymity of his own medium." continue to blog
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FORMAT: Hbk, 9.5 x 10 in. / 170 pgs / 50 duotone. LIST PRICE: U.S. $50.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $67.5 ISBN: 9781938922947 PUBLISHER: D.A.P./Koenig AVAILABLE: 3/22/2016 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: NA ONLY
Published by D.A.P./Koenig. Edited by Thomas Zander. Text by David Campany, Heinz Liesbrock, Jerry L. Thompson.
Walker Evans shot the photographs collected in Labor Anonymous as an assignment for Fortune magazine, which published a small selection of 20 images in its November 1946 issue, under the title "On a Saturday Afternoon in Detroit." Until now, however, the entire series of 50 photographs has never been reproduced. Evans’ extraordinary serial studies of the facial expressions and postures of Detroit workers walking the city’s streets are fascinating both as portraiture and as a surprising dimension of his photographic style. Shooting passersby against a plywood backdrop as they crossed his field of vision from distant right to close left (some noticing him, most not), with the light striking and modeling their features, Evans found that what he was creating with these images was "the physiognomy of a nation." This book compiles the photographs, contact sheets, small-version printlets, Evans’ annotations to newspaper clippings, drafts for an unpublished text, telegrams and every available print Evans made, along with the Fortune spread as published. Labor Anonymous captures a long-vanished moment in American history, and a crucial project in Evans’ oeuvre.
Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Walker Evans (1903–75) took up photography in 1928. His book collaboration with James Agee, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941), which portrayed the lives of three white tenant families in southern Alabama during the Depression, has become one of that era’s most defining documents. Evans joined the staff of Time magazine in 1945, and shortly after moved to Fortune magazine, where he stayed until 1965. That year, he became a professor of photography at the Yale University School of Art. Evans died at his home in Old Lyme, Connecticut, in 1975.
