Walker Evans (1903-1975) is often said to the best American documentary photographer of the century. His most important and famous work was his depiction of American rural life during the Great Depression. Commissioned by the Farm Security Administration (FSA) in 1935, he meticulously documented the life of the rural poor in Southern States in the midst of the economic and social crisis. Forty years later, Richard Avedon (1923-2004) embarked upon a six-year project during which he travelled through the American West, camera in hand, aspiring to depict the life of simple and poverty-stricken people and to show how desperate American countryside people were, far removed from the White House or from Hollywood. Both photographers dedicated an important part of their life to travels through the American countryside and portrayed an endangered America. Both used photography, and unexpectedly the same camera, an 8 x 10 Camera as a medium to express their concern. However, I will show in this paper that a careful comparison of their works demonstrates how different they were, not only in their methods and techniques, but also in their conception of photography: while Evans photographed artifacts, objects and places, following the tradition of documentary photography, Avedon photographed people, in the tradition of fashion photography. Therefore I will show how they achieved their common goal in different ways.
[...] a picture characterized by the absence of the owner of the house in the frame, but which is really meaningful as for his own condition and life. Indeed, the main characteristic of Walker Evans' work for the FSA is the almost complete absence of human life within the frame. Even though he took portraits for other assignments (e.g. his famous portrait of Allie Mae Burroughs (1935; fig. realized as part of reportage in a sharecropper family, for Fortune magazine), his series of photographs for the FSA includes very little portraits, often emphasizing less on the raw human feelings than on the conditions and the context of the subject. [...]
[...] Therefore, Avedon succeeded in his two goals: on the one hand to give a strong meaning and a broad impact to each portrait, and on the other hand to give America a new and truthful vision of itself. c. Two techniques, Two narratives: One goal? One must acknowledge the very different backgrounds of these photographers. Walker Evans began his work at a time when the power of photography on the masses was becoming more and more salient (proliferating illustrated magazines and newspapers in the 1930s), and he refused the aestheticism of the Pictorialist and Modernist photographic movements. [...]
[...] Conclusion This comparison shows that both photographers treated a common subject in two very different ways; they refused the conventions and traditions of their times and they both faced problems to escape their own photographic formation. Both attempted to represent a fact that is omnipresent but invisible: American countryside despair. But Evans and Avedon used antagonistic mediums: Evans used objects and places as symbols of the Great Depression and the threatened American culture while Avedon used people to show American West's desperation and misery. Two different ways, one same goal: they both portrayed society, but through two different—but interrelated—components: culture and people. This comparison shows how [...]
[...] By showing the conditions of life of people, but not people, Evans implicitly portrayed these people and gave a dramatic and even more powerful vision of their life, because his pictures have an impact on the whole society. b. Richard Avedon: a true interest in the people Richard Avedon, on the contrary, focused exclusively on people. Wishing to show the America, both desperate and hard working, he chose to photograph simple people coping with their harsh everyday life, like factory workers, truckers, miners, drifters and prisoners. [...]
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