Walker Evans
[Photographer, b. 1903, St. Louis, Missouri, d. 1975, New Haven, Connecticut.]
I find a howling error in composition, because something is in the wrong place, and I leave it there. God arranged that; I wouldn’t touch it.
Deft, witty, spanking little poems of hate.
(Describing photographs by Lee Friedlander)
Photography has nothing whatsoever to do with art. But it is an art for all that.
Many photographers are apt to confuse color with noise, and to congratulate themselves when they have almost blown you down with screeching hues alone—a bebop of electric blues, furious reds, and poison greens.
The unappreciated artist is at once very humble and arrogant too. He collects and edits the world about him. This is especially important in the psychology of camera work. This is why a man who has faith, intelligence, and cultivation will show it in his work. Fine photography is literate, and it should be.
I think all artists are collectors of images.
My photography was a semi-conscious reaction against right-thinking and optimism; it was an attack on the establishment.
One really doesn’t associate a machine—a little box with glass in it—with the personal imprint of the operator, but it is there, and it’s a kind of magic, inexplicable quality.
