1903 - 1975

Walker Evans was born in 1903. He took up photography in 1928, photographing life in New York, the architecture and people. He loved the medium although he was not able to make much money from his talents. In 1935, Roy Stryker hired him to work with the FSA. He had previously worked a bit for the Department of Interior and had certain ideas about how to document America. He thought it should be pure documentation, not propaganda. He became very well known for the work he did for the magazine Fortune during a leave of absence which culminated in the book, Let US Know Praise Famous Men, by James Agee in 1941. He stayed as a staff photographer at Fortune for 20 years. In 1965 he left to become a professor of photography at Yale University where he remained until his death.