CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/10/2016

Double Elephant 1973–74

"Walker Evans has silently affirmed not only the actual but the ineluctably aesthetic existence of things, of objects. He has required us to recognize that there really are things and persons in the world and that they make an inescapable condition of our lives, whether we like it or not. On the whole, his art puts itself on the side of our liking it, including us to acknowledge the relentless power and mysterious charm of both things, and persons, usually commonplace, mostly sad, often cast off, but permitted by the intermediation of his lens to assert the strangeness and dignity of their perdurable being." Excerpt from Lionel Trilling's introduction to Walker Evans' portfolio for Double Elephant Press and Evans' iconic "Main St., Ossining, New York" (1932) are reproduced from the invaluable new boxed set from Steidl. Image © Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitain Museum of Art.