Getty Museum
Havana Citizen / Citizen in Downtown Havana
Creator
Walker EvansAmerican Photographer · 1903–1975
All works by this person →> 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
More on Getty ULAN- Date
- 1933
- Medium
- Gelatin silver print
- Culture
- American
- Department
- Photographs
- Institution
- Getty Museum
>Except for certain morning shopping hours, Havana is still a largely male city. The tide of pedestrians along narrow Obispo Street, with its cavernous cool dark stores, or under the Prado portals, wall-papered with magazines and multicolored lottery tickets, the idlers in the open air cafes--nearly all are men in white linen, now and then a bright tie under a dark chin shaded by a straw hat tilted effectively. Walker Evans's photograph is the exact embodiment of writer Carleton Beals's description of Havana in his book *Crimes of Cuba*. Tall, dark, and handsome in a crisp white linen suit and straw boater, this "Havana Citizen" standing down by the newsstand filled with glamorous movie magazines casts a wary glance at a subject just out of camera range. Although Evans contributed photographs he made in Cuba to Beals's book, this evocative image did not appear in the publication.
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