Walker Evans: A Biography

Based on personal letters and interviews with more than 100 of his friends and colleagues, as well as his two former wives, this is a biography of the American photographer, Walker Evans. Evans's images of Southern sharecroppers and his pictures documenting the Depression era draw a portrait of the American soul. But what is known of the man himself? He attracted many of the brightest talents of the New York art world, counting Hart Crane, James Agee, Lincoln Kirstein, Ben Shahn and Berenice Abbott among his closest friends. But the man who charmed so many could also be cold and aloof; the artist whose work spoke of social injustice was an aristocratic aesthete and a spendthrift. The book offers a view not only of Evans but of the creative art world of which he was a part.