Timeline
The life and career of Walker Evans, 1903–1975
Born in St. Louis, Missouri on November 3
Graduates from Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts
Spends a year in Paris, auditing courses and absorbing literary modernism
Takes up photography while working a clerical job in New York
Three of his Brooklyn Bridge photographs appear in Hart Crane's poem "The Bridge"
Photographs Victorian houses near Boston with support from Lincoln Kirstein
Travels to Cuba to photograph for Carleton Beals's book "The Crime of Cuba"
Joins the Resettlement Administration (later the FSA) under Roy Stryker
Photographs three tenant-farmer families in Hale County, Alabama with writer James Agee
MoMA presents "American Photographs," its first solo exhibition for a photographer; begins secret subway portraits
Publishes "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" with James Agee
Joins Fortune magazine, where he works as a writer and editor
Becomes a professor of photography at the Yale University School of Art
Publishes the subway portraits as the book "Many Are Called"
MoMA mounts a major retrospective selected by John Szarkowski
Dies of a stroke on April 10 in New Haven, Connecticut
Explore by Decade
1930s
The Great Depression years. FSA photography project begins.
