Your favorite Walker Evans image?

[Struan Gray]

Struan, what was your second Walker Evans choice (by Paul Strand)?

Truckman's House. I was thinking of it as the best expression of the composition and layering found in the Bethlehem cross photo. It probably is anyway, Strand was better at that formal aesthetic look.

I was recently reading about how detailed the instructions were that Stryker handed out to his photographers. Evans must have had a very independent streak to have held out against the endless, over-determined injunctions to produce kitsch. About the only easily-read photo of his I know is the leaning shed in Tupelo.

[Bill Mitchell]

Truckman's House. .

Interesting choice, Struan. This is an image which is almost always reproduced in every collection of Strand's work. Yet it has never appealed to me. Is it also your favorite Stand photograph?

[Struan Gray]

I haven't seen enough of Strand's work to say if I have a favourite or not. I don't like the pictures from the Hebrides at all, but I do like a lot of the more formal exercises in composition. Wall Street is great. The Fence leaves me a little cold. I came across Truckman's House in a history of photography and loved it before reading the caption and finding out that it was by Strand.

I know that probably sounds a bit odd for someone as interested in photographic history as I am, but as an autodidact in a wasteland of poor libraries I rely on the net a lot, and Strand's present eclipse makes it hard to find much of his work online. Minor White is another giant of US photography who is in a similar position. The signature images are easy to find, but not enough to get a good feel for their work as a whole.