Walker Evans

Photographies américaines

This edition celebrates the 75th anniversary of the publication of the original book, faithfully reproducing the original 1938 edition and making this long-unobtainable work available once again.

The beautifully printed original edition of this book, American Photographs, was published by the Museum of Modern Art in 1938 to accompany an exhibition of Walker Evans’s photographs depicting the different faces of America in the 1930s. As the cover of this first edition states, “whether photographing New England or Louisiana, covering a political funeral in Cuba or a flood in Mississippi, or taking the utmost care not to disturb the environment of an ordinary place while at work, Evans may be viewed as a sort of disembodied, probing eye, like a conspirator against time’s battering.” More than any other artist, he invented images ofAmerica which after so long we now accept as reality. His work had a great influence on modern photography, as it did on literature, cinema and the visual arts in general.

This 75th anniversary edition, which includes a few new pictures but faithfully reproduces the spirit of the original 1938 edition, gives a whole new generation access to a pivotal work of its time. Since then, American Photographs was unobtainable for years and even subsequent editions, two of which altered the layout and the printing in small but significant ways, are now only to be found in libraries or particularly well-stocked secondhand bookshops. Thanks to new digital technology, this version, like the 50th anniversary edition published by MoMA in 1988, reproduces the exact same look of the original, eliciting the same quiver of delight.

Lincoln Kirstein was an American writer and an important figure in New York culture. His eclecticism and ambition gave him access to the city’s elite cultural circles and allowed him to mix with celebrities such as Gertrude Stein, Jean Cocteau, Walker Evans, and several others.
Sarah Meister is a curator in the Department of Photography at MoMA.