Walker Evans: Subjects & Themes

Sharecroppers

Evans's portraits of tenant farming families, especially the Hale County households of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.

4 works

Alabama Tenant Farmers

The white tenant-farmer families of Hale County, Alabama, that Evans documented in 1936 with James Agee.

Roadside Architecture

Stands, gas stations, and wayside structures along Southern highways that fascinated Evans's vernacular eye.

Storefronts

Small-town shopfronts, windows, and commercial facades photographed head-on across the American South.

Vernacular Architecture

Frame houses, churches, and folk building traditions that formed a systematic record of American design.

Signage

Hand-painted signs, advertisements, and printed lettering that Evans treated as a distinctly American art form.

Depression-Era America

The everyday landscapes and people of the 1930s United States during the Great Depression.

Great Depression

The economic crisis whose human and material toll Evans documented for the FSA.

Rural South

The towns, farms, and roads of the American South that were Evans's primary FSA territory.

Portraits

Reticent, frontal portraits, from Allie Mae Burroughs to the candid subway riders of Many Are Called.

New York City

Evans's adopted home, setting for his Brooklyn Bridge studies and his clandestine subway portraits.