LINES OF LANGUISH

Sharp. Hard. Focus. Evans' Depression-era photographs find beauty and respectability in impoverished conditions. While they seem to tell a story, they actually might not. Instead, Evans provides a blank gaze for us to construct our own stories for what we see. His photographs of people confront, but since they do so in such a strong and dignified way, the viewer's expected feelings of empathetic distress are quickly quashed by the disconnect, thereby compelling the viewer to think the image through.

In his photographs of interiors and exteriors -- such as the image above -- Evans is able to produce a lyricism that naturally permeates the shot simply because of his sensory intake of the immediate environment, which in this case is a poverty-stricken farm in late 1930s Alabama. In other words, the subjects he has already taken photos of have impacted him so that his unconscious guides him to shoot interiors and exteriors that echo the same dignified distress as the people. This particular photograph, which seems to be of the saddest kitchen shelf one could ever imagine, invites us to construct a reality. A reality perhaps of the worn mother using the last of the salt for dinner or a ragged young girl cleaning the two forks she shares with her whole family. The absence of people makes the viewer want to put them back in.

Visually, the stark contrast of the black and white allows the worn texture of the wood grain to become acutely apparent. The element of line is very forceful, especially in how the straight verticals of the wall planks are bisected by imperfect, bent diagonals. Since eyes are naturally drawn to circular forms, upon first glance a viewer may first see the ring hanging on the left before being carried to the right by the long horizontal shelf. But there is one magic element that pulls this photograph together so that without it, this print would not have made it out of the darkroom. It is the visual anchor: the dark rounded canister hanging to the right of the salt shaker. If you blot it out with your thumb, the photo just washes over because of the loss of that stopping point. It works by grabbing your gaze so that you linger and are forced to process the photograph as a whole.