Subway Portrait

Getty Museum

Subway Portrait

Creator

American Photographer · 1903–1975

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> Leaving aside the mysteries and the inequities of human talent, brains, taste, and reputations, the matter of art in photography may come down to this: it is the capture and projection of the delights of seeing; it is the defining of observation full and felt. > > -- Walker Evans Walker Evans began to photograph in the late 1920s, making snapshots during a European trip. Upon his return to New Y

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Date: 1941
Medium: Gelatin silver print
Culture: American
Department: Photographs
Institution: Getty Museum

For the purposes of Walker Evans's continuing quest to obtain anonymous portraits, the subway was the place "where the people of the city range themselves at all hours under the most constant conditions." In order to remain inconspicuous, Evans used a hidden camera: a small, fast Contax that he painted flat black, strapped to his chest, and operated with a long wire strung down his right sleeve. In 1966 he published the images with James Agee's introduction as the book *Many Are Called*.

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