James Agee and Walker Evans collaborated on two of the most famous books of the 20th century: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men and Many Are Called. I checked out the second, which is a study of New York subway passengers between 1938 and 1941. The idea of photographing mass transit has been done multiple times since then, and as far as I know, Walker Evans was the first to do this in any systematic way. The book wasn’t published until the mid 1960s, but it is probably one of the most influential photo books of the 20th Century. Evans photographed people unaware of the camera in an effort to capture them lost in their own thoughts. Yet all look uniquely human, with some form of fear of the past, or hope for the future.
The subjects are diverse. About the only thing they share in common is that they somehow ended up in front of Evans’ lens, which was hidden in his coat enabling him to photograph surreptitiously. Some are reading newspapers; others stare into the distance, only a few feet from Evans.
Subways are unique places that force total strangers to stand or sit in close confines for extended periods of time. Passengers can be right next to each other and yet totally absorbed in their own thoughts. It’s often a study of human isolation.
Over the course of three years, he took more than 600 photographs before he started to sift through them ultimately, less than 100 were included
The images are a sign of the times based on the fashion. At the same time, they are universal as they show how humans withdraw inwards when held in close confines with one another. No one is smiling, yet no one seems overtly hostile to each other.
Several critics have said Evans’ goal was to show America as it was, through the eyes of its people rather than as it likes to see itself. Writer James Agee wrote the introduction in 1940, about 25 years before it was ultimately published. Jeff L. Rosenheim wrote the afterward, which provides a great deal of context about what was going on in Evans’ life at the time.
Walker Evans argued that despite the close quarters, the subway let people relax and show their inner self. It is the opposite of studio and glamour photography, which seeks to show people at their best, or what’s expected as their best. The photo on plate 20 is of particular interest to me. It shows a young man, possibly Asian, wearing a fedora, overcoat and tie. He stares to the right of the photographer and his thoughts are hard to guess. He looks concerned, or possibly tired. It’s hard to know for sure, and I think that’s the appeal of these photographs.