The design draws inspiration from its origins by the merger of the know-how of East and West. Each element consists two different scenes separated by a border that both formal pictorial. Parties or blue monochrome clearly call for Delftware that flourished in Holland in the seventeenth century.

Characterized by floral designs and plants, with pastoral scenes, hunting scenes or pastoral, the other part of the elements referred directly to the work of Chinese artisans and imagery. The Chinese kaolin were porcelain was developed, in Tangshan, “the capital of porcelain Bone China” the dishes Hybrid occurred.

All finishes are hand-made, like the border which divides the scenery. The Hybrid service, with an exemplary blend of  fairytale colors and unique variety of forms, make for an Alice in Wonderland vision of the dishes.

Collection Hybrid includes dinner plates, soup, dessert, bowls, coffee cups with saucers and a bowl.

The collection is available at UARE Design.

The collection all belongs to the Science Fiction Archives, founded by Arnaud Grunberg in 2008, the archives preserve and publicly make available, several thousand articles relating to science fiction. Arnaud began collecting sci-fi items in 1977, when Star Wars™ first came out.

Boba Fett doll in its box, France, 1981 – Kenner, a subsidiary of Hasbro

Dolls Obi-Wan (Ben) Kenobi and Darth Vader, United States, 1978 – Kenner

Scenography of the exhibition “Star Wars Toys”

The exhibit runs through March 17, 2013.

The simple story behind these bold chair designs that mix graphic design, painting and urban art, goes something like this…

Years ago in Stockholm, Aksel Varichon, one of the founders of AK-LH design house, received a chair as a gift from his aunt Wera. The original chair which now stands in his Parisian apartment, sparked a glorious idea. One day, Aksel and AK-LH manager Francois Le Helloco Boulenger wanted to ‘put someone in the chair’ in a permanent way and the ‘Tante Wera’ wing chair was born.

‘Flow’ Wing chair

Made entirely in France, every model of the ‘Tante Wera‘ wing chair is produced in limited edition of 7. Manufactured in the heart of the Vosges forest, its solid beech bases are then entirely dressed by expert fingers. Fingers belonging to the skilled woodworkers and upholsterers who work on these works of art, have all been taught in the best schools in the Neufchâteau area, french style seat historical centre. The 100% natural fabric made from 58% cotton and 42% linen, is printed in the Lyon region.

Quite the conversation pieces, the two ‘Flow’ and ‘Talk’ prototype chairs were first introduced during the Graphismes exhibition set up in 2008 by the Parisian gallery Artegalore (Stéphanie de Santis & Guillaume Garouste).

‘Talk’ Wing chair

The ‘Flow’ chair was exhibited in Paris in 2008-2009 by 107 Rivoli (‘Musée des Arts décoratifs de Paris’ shop inside the Louvre museum) and at the Body House by François Bernard trends gallery during ‘Maison & Objet’ international fair in September 2009.

‘Food’ Wingchair

There is a latest addition to this range of digitally printed ‘Tante Wera’ wing chairs.  The ‘Food’ chair, which was presented in 2011 at Sentou (Paris). Instead of the use of figures, a graphic pattern has been applied to this chair.

We’ll take one of each!

Mind you, AK-LH offers don’t stop here, they have other offerings as well. In AK-LH’s graphic design creation and edition studio 2012-2013 catalogue, they feature 5 collections (cushions, tea towels, kitchen linen and bags), the new ‘Comics’, ‘Pastel’ (seen below) and ‘Techno’ ranges and also the ‘Freaks’ and ‘Food’ flagship collections.

‘Pastel’ Cushions

The mastermind behind every AK-LH creation, Aksel Varichon, is a graphic designer and illustrator,who  graduated from ESAG Penninghen (Graphic Art School) in Paris. He has been creating an eclectic array of design work for cinema posters, logos, CD/DVD’s and art books since 1999.

You can find these chairs at the following retailers: Etoffe and UARDesign and at the AK-LH website itself where you can learn more about their products.

What do you think of these chairs?

In an attempt to bring clarity to this vague term, this infographic and motion graphic created by the Killer Infographics team of Senior Content Specialist Josh, design by Senior Designer Alaina, and motion graphics (complete with an original score) by Animation Guru Graham, shows the world what “Make it Pop” actually means across genres.

The newest city to “rebrand” themselves is Dusseldorf in Germany. It seem the technological world has infiltrated the design, as we are sure you’ll notice the in-your-face emoticon, which definitely promotes happiness and well being. Take a look.

The focus of their new website is a the style of a smiley-scale logo, which shows a smiling face and also represents the first letter of the city. The smiling: D to a future contribution that the city come over personable and friendly.

This “smiling D” is as an umbrella brand that will occur on it’s own, in isolation from it’s existing city logo, a blue square which combines a stylized river course of the Rhine, and the emblem of the city, the lion.

Future application examples of logo in use:

What do you think of the new Dusseldorf identity?

via

Imagine our delight when we came across this globe, which marries one of our favorite childhood story books Where The Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak with our favorite form of cheap travel. Behold the Where The Wild Things Are Globe by Wendy Gold…

All artwork is sized and colorized to match each unique globe. You can specify if you’d like to match a certain color palette and you get to choose what size globe you prefer. Such as 8 or 12 inch globes, or 16 and 30 inch globes, which start at $450.00, as well as floor globes which are available at additional pricing.

Each globe has it’s own character and because of their age, many of the globes are no longer geographically accurate. (But who cares…traveling in the past is always fun too!)

All of the artwork is hand-cut, decoupaged on, and then finished off into what you see before you. No two are exactly alike.

We love them! Check out Wendy Gold’s store, Imagination Nations on Etsy to get one of your own and see what other unique designs she has.

For the most part women donned the ever so feminine dress and skirts, while the men were dapper in suits and button ups. It was only recently, (the 1960′s) that fashion really broke out of it’s mold and took a hippy, out-the-box turn. Take a look…

Behold…Face Lace by makeup artist Phyllis Cohen. Very avant-guarde and sexy – these can be worn to a club, to a party, and just about anywhere really.

Check out the intricate designs…

They’ll put you back between £13.95 – £19.95 (pounds) – for you American folk that will run you up to about $32.00. Visit Face Lace to see the video and learn more about the product.

Would you wear these?

There is a question we’ve been asking ourselves since the dawn of advertising. There have been books written about it. TV shows surrounding the culture of it (think Mad Men and The Pitch), and lawsuits over the design of them (Apple vs. Samsung anyone?)

What makes us choose one product or brand over another?

What is the first thing applied to a brand? A logo. It says what the product/brand is about and what it wants you to know about it. A logo is personality stamp.

Does a brand’s logo really help you decide on choosing their products over others? Subconsciously, experts say yes. Graphic designers, marketing managers and creative directors hope so and are paid to know so. Heck, even Arby’s is undergoing a rebrand and redesigned their logo. But will customers care?

Take something as mundane as when you’re staring at a box of plastic dish washing gloves…what makes you decide to buy one kind over another? Price? Conditioning? Colors? Depends on individual circumstance.

How about interacting with a product? We say yes. Take Arby’s. You end up interacting with that product on a very personal level. You ingest it.

Let’s confuse you and go back to the gloves.

Sure the color might pop and induce a euphoric feeling as you lather up those greasy spoons, but touching it to make sure it’s durable, and the most important question you will ask yourself…does it fit my hands?

Think Tactile

Recently drawn to some Lemongrass soap in the toiletry aisle of my supermarket I realized what would make me buy the item. Sure, the packaging was natural looking and made me feel as if it were “organic”. However, it was a wrap around piece of cardboard that actually showed the soap, sans full packaging. This allowed me to feel it, run my hands over its ridges. Yes, it had ridges. I played with it in my hands for a full 20 seconds, holding it in my palm, turning it over, squeezing it. Who squeezes soap? This is not Charmin! Ah, but then, most importantly…I smelled it.

The smell alone caused my hand to quickly retract the soap from my nose and place the bar in my blue plastic shopping basket. I reached out yet again and took the next scent into my hand and allowed Lavender and Myrrh to waif under my nose. A mental note to buy this scent next time consciously computed in my brain’s To Do file cabinet and I felt myself smile knowing I’d remember.

When a product affects us for longer than 15 seconds we’re practically sold. It made me stop in my tracks. Put down my basket and interact with it. This leads us to why Apple products sell so well.

Ever walk into an Apple store. Everyone is playing with an item, or patiently waiting to. Or not so patiently waiting to have an Apple Genius help them play with their Apple product they recently bought, so they can use it better. Or patiently waiting at a check out line to purchase they’re new i-phone that they already played with. It’s all about interaction.

Sure, we love Internet shopping. Who doesn‘t love shopping in their pajamas? But there is always that hovering doubt. Will it fit? How does it feel? Is it real leather? What’s my ring size again?  Even paper companies offer samples of their paper before you opt to buy it. Why? Think tactile.

It’s all about interaction with said product. Offer a great experience and it will sell the product for you, without care for what its branding position is.

We sacrifice this when we shop online, but we’re lazy creatures and succumb to the ease of it all.

Ever see a pair of shoes online, decide against buying them, only to see them in a store a few weeks or months later and say “Ew! Thank god I didn’t buy those, they’re horrid”.

Most will say – it is a culmination of things that steer people to choose a brand or product. I agree. But the one thing that is tried and true above all others, is getting to know your product on a personal level. Then all the subconscious entities take over and your brand has been sold.

I don’t care how many times Pepsi, Arby’s, Gap, or even online websites change their logo. It will never be the main reason why people choose your product over another. It will always be about the experience.

What brands do you find yourself returning to?

Margay Cat

Baby Cradled In Dad’s Arms

Water Lizard

To see more amazing drawings visit Silva’s DeviantArt page.

Interview with Lorette C. Luzajic from IdeaFountain

Barcelona artist Beatriz Mahan creates intriguing, composition-based collages that she refers to as matrices. She uses a variety of simple elements to play with shape, colour, texture, and mark-making. I found her visually stunning creations on flickr and saw right away an eerie kinship with some aspects of my own work. Since my weakness as an artist is to complicate my organization or make my works too busy, Beatriz has inspired my creative growth by reminding me to simplify and allow the elements some breathing room. I was thrilled to talk with her through email and to share her great collages with you.

Lorette C. Luzajic: How are your collages born? Do you start with a particular texture or interesting piece of paper? What do you have in mind when you begin?

Beatriz Mahan: I never have a specific idea in mind when begin a work. Sometimes I can start with a piece of paper that I like, an interesting font, or very often with a background that I have created experimenting with colours, paints and textures. Sometimes it’s chance that generates an interesting composition while I’m doing something else and then I start a new work. Actually, my job is very intuitive.

The hallmark of your collage work is simplicity. How do you resist the temptation to add too many elements?

I don’t see this as a temptation, but I think the work demands certain things, I just listen to it carefully. If I feel that the work needs more elements, I just simply put them and see if they can be part of the composition. I think my work is a constant dialogue with materials and compositions. Sometimes I’m stuck in a work which I think is hopeless, but suddenly something accidental happens. Paper is pure magic and again, I was just there listening carefully.

Many collage workers fill an entire page or canvas, but for you, space is a major element of composition. Was your work always minimalist? How did your style evolve?

I do not really know where my compositions come from, but I have always tended to be simple and minimalist. I think that the more space and silence the work has- or creates- the more room for contemplation and inner reflection. I also think that the elements can speak more for themselves when they have more room. This creates a striking contrast, which is what I like to explore. The elements have always been there in all the compositions, but now we see them more as they are “alone”.

You continually use the words “matrix” or “matrices” when describing your work. What do these terms mean to you, philosophically, and in the context of your art?

A matrix is a plate that is used in etching and can create several works. I never thought of it as a philosophical term in my art, but this is the perfect example for me to explain what the long and detailed process of creating means, without knowing how it will end and learning all while I’m creating. It is a vivid example of the meaning of the process of creation.

Tell me about your collecting process. Where do you cull your elements from?

I use a lot of pieces of my test prints, papers painted by me while experimenting with other techniques. I have a great assortment of papers and scraps that have been accumulating for years, and old photographs recovered from my family. I often go to the recycling point in my neighborhood and pick up magazines and books. It’s amazing the amount of ephemera that we can use and these are everywhere, you just have to look at them.

What and who inspires you and your work?

I am inspired by craftsmanship, hand made pieces, in any discipline. I am inspired by the ancient arts and crafts, I love going to fairs and seeing the blacksmith, the old type printer, the shoe maker doing their work as in the Middle Ages. It inspires me to see the artwork of others in all possible styles! I surf the web a lot and follow the work of many modern artists (and constantly search for more). I love the classics Chagall, Rembrandt and Goya, and I enjoy especially abstract art.

See more of Beatriz Mahan’s work at http://www.beamahan.com and http://www.flickr.com/photos/beamahan/

Click here to view the embedded video.

Comes in a bottle hanging edition of regular A2 card. Order it here at 55his.

What you are about to see should be mandatory in all hospitals. Quality of recovery would show an amazing increase if family and friends could comfortably stay as long as they wish and lend support to the patient just by being there. Not all of us can afford a private wing you know.

Wieland Healthcare has produced this piece of convertible furniture, Sleep Too, that is a virtual family room concept. Check it out…

Flippy Cat recreated Vincent van Gogh’s “Starry Night” from just over 7,000 dominos. The second attempt took about 11 hours total to build.

Believe it or not, the first attempt failed, when a screw was dropped from the camera rig onto it. As a result, the swirling clouds were improved in the second attempt.

Amazing!!

Most telling of the times are the advertisements from which we can glean what was in style, how much things cost, and what was no longer in ration (following the war). Take a leap back in time and check out these advertisments in the January 1, 1946 New York Times newspaper.

Brioschi Anti-Acid

TWA

Sperti Sun Lamps

A&S Ozone Generator

Gimbels Slipcovers

Macy’s Tires

Oppenheim Collins Fur

Lloyd’s Gin

Eno

Stern’s Glitter Snood

Saks’ Creme Oil Perm

The Coward Shoe

Canadian Beaver Fur

Beach Hat

Baldwin Piano

Arnold Constable Overcoats

Stern’s Atlas Dresses

by Lorette C. Luzajic

Walker’s many associates described him as charming and charismatic; he was also a lite version of a dandy, an American rendition, if you will, with astute observatory witticisms and a penchant for style. Even as he saw great beauty in the “vernacular,” (a favourite word) and ordinary, Walker was “an aesthete from the crown of his carefully barbered hair to the cap toes of his Peal benchmade shoes” (Daniel Mark Epstein, New Criterion, March 1, 2000.) Everyone knew that Walker was adventurous enough to embark on all kinds of trips, to wade into neighbourhoods that spanned the full spectrum of humanity, and to enjoy his fair share of parties and reveling.

General Store interior – Alabama USA

Yet somehow, it seems as if Walker was not a full participant in life. His circles of creative writers and artists threw themselves passionately into their world. Decadent and superficial though Walker may have judged them, there was an emotional engagement, a hunger to participate in the full spectrum of life’s rich pageant. Epstein noted that Walker exhorted students to complete work with intelligence, with faith, with cultivation.  “Passion he does not mention,” Epstein says, “because it cannot be acquired or reliably controlled.”

Outside of these circles of bohemia, Walker did not seem to get very close to others or to maintain or forge deep familial bonds. He had many friends, and yet there remained something implacable and unreachable about him. The emotional detachment wasn’t so much a mask as it was his very psyche itself.

His empathies were more analytical than practical. He expressed frustration in his notes over what he perceived as people’s inability to be honest about their “indifference.” Perhaps even Charles Burroughs’ memories of Walker’s prying presence in his family’s life are telling.

Walker’s connection to others in relationship to their art was especially superficial, and oftentimes transparently jealous and even downright mean. He didn’t seem able to summon any genuine praise for artists he knew personally. The successful Edward Steichen’s brilliant work was mere “slick technique, over all of which is thrown a hardness and superficiality…has nothing to do with any person.” Since outright dismissal of some greats like Alfred Stieglitz would be too obviously absurd, Walker resorted often to snide condescension. Apparently, Stieglitz’s belief that he would have been a great painter, too, “revealed a great insecurity.” Walker frequently dropped critical remarks alluding to a photographer’s sentimentalism, romanticism, or nostalgia, making clear time and time again his belief in his own superiority, since his works were not tainted with such frippery.

Some believe Walker’s underhanded insinuations and sleights extended into his work. “While often portrayed as a neutral documentarian of the American scene, Evans  in fact intended to offend not only the polite Victorian sensibilities of people like his parents but also the ‘smuggly rich,’ the pretentious scene-makers of the art world, do-gooders of the Communist crowd, and any other identifiable group of betes noires,” said art writer Douglas Eklund.

Not all of Walker’s cruelties were so subliminal, however. He said this of H.G. Wells: ”not a poet, not an artist, not an historian. Just a goddamn little socialist.” Book reviewer Nicholas Fox Weber also quotes the photographer referring to his relatives. ”I got an immediate impression of false teeth, dandruff, adenoids, varicose veins and halitosis of the eardrums. . . . How fatal it has been that all the women have ruled the men right out of their masculinity, independence, courage, will and at last, brains even.”  One colleague he called “phony to the fingertips.” He referred to his supporter and mentor, photographer Ralph Steiner, as “a bitter little Jew.” Unfortunately, there is quite a selection of antisemitic comments to choose from.

With women, Walker’s role as observer and emotional detachment also seem to have usurped other important aspects of relationships. Sometimes the detachment was more like downright disgust. For example, he expressed revulsion for pregnant women, dismissing a woman “in that condition.” He loved Georgia O’Keeffe but was disinterested in her artistic passions. He was in love with his first wife, Jane Smith, but after their divorce he excised her mention from future editions of a book he had dedicated to her.  In a post-divorce letter to her, he declared, “From now on I will consider you dead.”

As Weber astutely remarked, “How strange when someone whose art would suggest humanity seems lacking in it.”

The biographer Rathbone opined that “his sex drive was inverted into a purely visual lust,” a comment that may be as insightful as it is speculative. In her biography of Caroline Blackwood, Dangerous Muse, Nancy Schoenberger writes, “Caroline would be introduced to the city by this sublime interpreter of deep-grained American life.” Evans was in his fifties and Caroline was a young woman. He was smitten by her tempestuous, fiery nature and her beauty. Nonetheless, Caroline maintained there was no sexual interaction; they would drive around looking at junk stores, or he would suggest books that she should read. Caroline described him as a “fantasist” when it came to women. Though anyone may understandably refrain from divulging details of their intimate life, it is quite likely indeed that Walker was content to show her what he saw of the world and to take pictures of her.

Others attested to Evans’ penchant for collecting tawdry erotic novels. Rathbone said that he was perceived by his peers as someone who was only interested in “women he was sure he could never seduce.”  It seemed he enjoyed most to witness and show, in his working life and his romantic life as well. His role as observer permeated everything; it was so all consuming that one might say it sublimated his actual living with looking.

Other accounts defy the decidedly hands-off approach in these ones. James Mellow, whose biography, titled simply Walker Evans, suggested all sorts of soap operatic entanglements. Mellow has been accused of tawdry salacity; others appreciate his frank realism and his respected tenure as a biographer. Mellow implies a number of homoerotic friendships, notably with John Cheever. There was also the alleged topsy turvy tumbling of Walker into bed with his colleague James Agee- and Agee’s wife. Though Mellow is careful to buffer such assertions with possiblies and probablies, there can be no doubt of hearty experimentations of some sort or another. But what one explores as a young person is seldom definitive of their erotic identity; curiousity leads to many dead ends, not just open doors.

Nor does a livelier immersion in physical adventure necessarily negate a more comfortable identity as an emotional bystander. Even Cheever’s reflections, if true, indicate more curiousity on Walker’s part than robust physicality. Quoted by both Rathbone and Mellow, Cheever rather crudely recalls that Walker’s “enormous” masculinity “showed only the most fleeting signs of life.”

“Everybody by rote went to bed with everybody else, and the result was an emotional desert and confusion,” Evans himself said in Mellow’s biography. Perhaps this statement is the most telling one of all.

Following his chaste romance with Lady Blackwood, Walker married a “trophy wife,” a stunning woman thirty years his junior. Isabelle Storey fell head over heels for the famous photographer; in her book, Walker’s Way, she describes how he showed her all the important things she was eager to know. But their marriage was empty; Walker was cold and selfish and not the passionate person she had naively believed him to be.

Storey stayed with him for more than ten years even though she described her husband as a man who “couldn’t love.”  She was reluctant to leave a sick and aging man. But Walker didn’t stop looking in order to be fully present with her; she watched him watching his young female students. Storey told Marilyn Bauer of TCPalm News, “Walker in the end didn’t really like women. He was attracted to them. He once said he was only faithful to his negative, and that was true.”

Undoubtedly, Walker’s artistic vision could not have happened without the particular makeup of his psyche. The intensity of his level of attraction to the visual world resulted in detachment in other arenas of his existence, or perhaps his singular obsession was the result of his lack of emotional engagement. Like anyone else, he had weaknesses or imbalances or traits that were consequential in his particular set of circumstances. Certainly, each of us possesses private turmoil and inner demons.  Evans is hardly the only human to seek refuge from these, or to dull his interactive experiences through alcoholism.

I have always believed that whitewashing one’s own or someone else’s unpleasant side is to deny reality, and worse, to deny them their full humanity. That said, Walker’s sins were rather mild when compared with everyman. Each of us says hideous things about others, but most of us aren’t famous and will not be called to account for every carelessness. Clearly the feelings of others were of some consideration to him, as evidenced in his concern for the privacy of the subway riders he had photographed. These pictures were important to him as an artistic triumph, a success he denied himself, for the sake of discretion, by waiting decades before publishing.

Walker was never the longwinded confessional type; he was an intelligent and intuitive person who acknowledged that he had, like everyone else, made some poor choices and regretful errors. Speaking with Yale Alumni Magazine a year before his fatal stroke, Walker was asked whether his attraction to photographing mundane objects was because of the aesthetic challenges the topics presented. His response was quite personal and revelatory about how he looked at the world- and how he looked at himself.

“No, I’m just made that way,” he said.  “It’s partly rather perverse. I got a lot of my early momentum from disdain of accepted ideas of beauty, and that’s partly good, it’s partly original. It’s also partly destructive. I wasn’t a very nice young man. I was tearing down everything if possible. I only see that in retrospect. It was just in me, as there are certain curious things in you that you’ll wonder at, later on when you’re my age, but you won’t ever get to the bottom of.”

A year or two before his death in 1975, Walker bought a Polaroid camera. Though he had avoided colour completely, declaring that photographers confused “colour with noise,” he explored full colour instant photography in the last year of his life.

These provided another extensive document of tiny details from the man who was really a camera. He photographed anything- people, especially, and words and signs.

They provide a stunning demonstration of the changes in Americana since the time of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. America had transformed into a raucous, booming, bustling hub of high octane commerce and invention. Suburbia had been invented and mass production had become mainstream.  There is an unfathomable leap from the destitution and slow-paced simplicity in the Depression world to the frantic, frenetic kind of both excitement and desperation captured in the Polaroids. It was Walker’s almost Warholian project, in the era of instant gratification. It was the ‘70s, after all.

What is striking in this study of Walker’s closing chapter and curtain call is not a social commentary on either the ugliness of modernity or the wretched hell of the past. It is simply looking, watching reality unfold and change, and seeing the beautiful and ugly things that made up the world. “A garbage can, occasionally, to me at least, can be beautiful. That’s because you’re seeing,” Walker said in a 1974 interview. “I lean toward the enchantment, the visual power, of the esthetically rejected subject.”

There’s no particular agenda in the instant photography, Walker’s final legacy. As always, the camera was  “just looking.”

“I used to try to figure out precisely what I was seeing all the time,” the artist said.  “Until I discovered I didn’t need to. If the thing is there, why, there it is.”

Walker had a playful heyday in that final chapter. He took over 2600 colourful pictures with that Polaroid.

Perhaps it was the most spontaneous he had ever been.

Visit Lorette C. Luzajic  at Ideafountain.

by Lorette C. Luzajic

“I stare and stare at people, shamelessly,” the great American photographer Walker Evans confessed in his book, Many Are Called.

Walker Evans (1937)

It wasn’t just people that he scrutinized. He saw everything, where others saw nothing. Teaching students photography at Yale, he would ask his students what they could see. If they said nothing, or said there was nothing there with which to make a photograph, he would tell them to look more closely. “Oh, yes, you can. Try to find a way.”

“Walker made you feel like you were going through life blind,” said Lady Caroline Blackwood of the photographer. “His brilliant eye would notice the tiniest detail.”

Blackwood is quoted in Belinda Rathbone’s Walker Evans: a Biography, and this eloquent compliment speaks volumes. Blackwood was not exactly a shy, inexperienced wallflower who went through life with her eyes half shut. She was a muse to Freud’s artist grandchild and to booze-soaked poet Robert Lowell; she was heiress to the Guinness estate, and fittingly, a lush herself; and she was a writer whose graphic depictions of sadistic pedophilia would make Nabokov blush. Blackwood was not blind- she had seen a thing or two.

Caroline

Walker Evans created many thousands of images, but he is best known for his work with the Farm Security Administration. The FSA’s goal was “rural rehabilitation,” with hopes of combating Depression-era poverty among American farmers. The socialist effort was a mixed bag of temporary Band-Aid-ism and abject failure, but the project had an unexpected benefit- it became one of the most thorough historical documentation legacies of all time.

The FSA hired photographers to record American life during the Depression, accumulating over seventy-five thousand images. The pictures in our minds from this epoch are invariably from this colossal undertaking. The project forms the backbone of our visual narrative of the American past, an inheritance we are fortunate to have.

Walker was, alongside the great Dorothea Lange, the best of the FSA documenters. But he was not the most reliable hire. Ian Jeffrey’s Photography: A Concise History reports that he “failed to turn in enough pictures, and failed even to report his whereabouts.” Walker worked for the prestigious Fortune Magazine for two decades, but the gig required the magazine’s acquiescence and patience, as Walker more or less insisted on his way or the highway. And when commissioned to take photos for a book about Cuba, he made “some conditions.” They were somewhat peculiar ones for an assignment. “I wanted to be left alone. I wanted nothing to do with the book…I’d like to just go down there and make some pictures but don’t tell me what to do…I never read the book.”

Walker was also rather flexible in interpreting deadlines. Worse, some photographers, editors, and critics say he lacked technical skills because he placed little store in them. But the reputation of his disdain for the darkroom is unfounded- he even preferred to hang out and supervise assistants in progress. He was a perfectionist very attached to, and very possessive of the results bearing his name. And he did own a variety of equipment, despite remarks made to the contrary. Experts have even determined that photographic errors attributed to his work were mainly due to storage and conservation issues outside his control.

However, it is true that he preferred that the real work happen while actually taking the pictures, not in tricks done after the fact. Photography at the onset of Walker’s career was dependent on cumbersome equipment, primitive flash powder and bulbs, and all manner of weighty contraptions, and Walker found these to be obtrusive to the objective, natural, neutral things he wanted to capture. “I don’t believe in manipulation… of any photographs or negatives. To me it should be strictly straight photography and look like it.”

Because of this burdensome rigmarole, and expectations of mechanical proficiency in the darkroom, photography itself had, as the artist says, a “despised” reputation. It was seen as strictly commercial, as a science at best, or as a trade or craft. But Walker had a different idea. “I am an artist,” he would reportedly grumble. A student once asked what kind of camera he worked with. Walker resented the question; it was like asking an author what kind of typewriter he used.

Walker liked to leave the responsibility of his photography to the mind and the eye.  He saw everything and missed nothing, as Caroline expressed. His gift was showing it to us. Another figure of New York society, Susanna Coggeshall, said in Rathbone’s biography, “He took in everything…he was conscious of everything in the room…He practically was a camera.”

Walker himself famously stated, “Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more…Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.”

Like the cliché goes, a picture is worth a thousand words, and the FSA photographs show us a richly textured humanity, even if they were rote assignment pieces as far as Walker was concerned. The bleak and beautiful depictions transport us into a bygone era, into the Dust Bowl, into harsh expanses of cotton fields and towns populated by people straight out of a Cormac McCarthy novel. The work of John Steinbeck and William Faulkner also comes alive; Evan’s scenery is what these authors conjured in their stories.

Nor are these mere anthropological records, or snapshots for scientific data, even though this was, in a sense, their purpose. We see what Walker saw, more than just the crude reality of poverty and toil, but the nobility of simplicity, of people working to hold their families together, of people socializing on street corners of tiny towns. We are compelled by Walker’s instinctive skills using shapes, light, and composition in photo after photo. We see shapes and patterns in the repetitive lineups of steel mill worker company houses, in the cluttered clump of cars at an auto dump; we see the stark angles of a church facade against an empty sky; the dusty trails, the peeling billboards, the beauty inherent in curious jumbles of objects. Though Walker was born to affluent people, and socialized in circles of considerable or at least moderate means, he was not impressed by vulgar display of privilege. But he says he didn’t take on his work documenting the poor or the everyday to make any particular comments. “I didn’t like the label that I unconsciously earned of being a social protest artist,” he told Yale Alumni Magazine. “I never took it upon myself to change the world.” Here, as in all of his work, the artist was just looking.

Looking at an image that had inspired Walker, a photo by Paul Strand, insightful blogger Shelley Powers saw how Walker differed from other photographers trying to create a statement. “In this picture, Evans saw an uncompromising realism unfettered by any emotional hooks. There was no attempt to make the woman into something either to be admired or pitied; nor was there an attempt to make a ‘pretty’ picture, or a noble one. Combined, this realism and lack of emotionality formed the basis for Evans’ own style of photography: unsentimental, realistic, and unstaged.”

This is exactly what made his work such a major contribution to the historical significance of the FSA project, and the reason these images are the ones we associate with Walker Evans. This is the body of work that is always mentioned in introductory or cursory discussions, and most scholarly or in-depth examinations also focus on this crucial legacy.

This is partly due to the acclaim a closely related project received, in which the photographer accompanied writer James Agee to spend several months in “field work” visiting the fields of Alabama sharecroppers like Floyd and Allie Mae Burroughs.

Sharecroppers

The work was assigned by Fortune Magazine, which borrowed Evans from the FSA. When Agee refused to rewrite a manuscript filled with what Fortune later described as “baffling digressions” (David Whitford, September 2005), the magazine canned the story. It was then published by Houghton Mifflin as a book and declared by critic Lionel Trilling “the most realistic and important moral effort of our generation.” It was hailed as an undisputed masterpiece.

This was despite the fact that only six hundred copies sold at the time and the book went out of print. It wasn’t until the 1960s, after another of Agee’s works posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize, that the book was reissued and became widely popular.

Not everyone was impressed, however. Welder Charles Burroughs was in his seventies when he came forward to express disapproval about Walker and James snooping and spying and parading the family’s private poverty to the world. Walker had been dead for quarter of a century when the subject of some of his photos, who was a bright-eyed four-year-old at the time he had been photographed, complained.

“We never even got one of the damn books,” Charles told David Whitford in a Tuscaloosa Waffle House. Allie Mae’s and Floyd’s youngest child, Dottie, also told The Atlantic Magazine that Walker and James had loafed around taking notes while the family slaved away in the fields. Since her folks thought the pair was from the government, they assumed their stay would result in some help for the family. Instead, the pair inappropriately took notes about her parents having sex, and mentioned the filthiness of a curtain. “Why don’t you wash it rather than sitting on your ass and writing about it?”  Dottie wondered in retrospect.

But the picture of their mother, Allie Mae Burroughs, remains one of the single most iconic images of the Depression, and of Walker’s whole career.

All this notwithstanding, this body of work was more or less inadvertent. It is small in scope compared to the entirety of Walker’s photographic output and creative interests. He took pictures of cities; sidewalks, stores, tenement buildings, signs, ads, streets, structures, feats of engineering, architecture, statues, murals, posters, automobiles, windows, alleys, churches, statues, and trucks. He took endless pictures of building facades.  Of banks. He took pictures of people- self-portraits, Cubans, women, farmers, shoppers and shopkeepers, sailors, Tahitians, construction workers, children, derelicts, communists, African-Americans, sharecroppers, friends, and his muse, the tumultuous and eccentric Lady Blackwood. He took photos of interiors and the stuff that filled them; parlours, homes, stores, churches. He took pictures of carnival rides, of objects, of tools, of cemeteries, of trains, of mills, of industrial plants, of fire hydrants, of garbage cans, of sinks, of trash, of advertising, of stations, of barns, of loading docks. He took photographs of photographs, telling a story within a story, bearing witness to his witness of the witness on someone’s wall.

He was a pioneer, too, of the idea of the hidden camera, and did a major project on the New York subway. “The setting is a sociological gold mine awaiting a major artist,” Walker says in his estate’s collection, Walker Evans at Work. “…the dream ‘location’ for any portrait photographer weary of he studio and of the horrors of vanity. Down in this swaying sweatbox he finds a parade of unselfconscious captive sitters, the selection of which is automatically destined by raw chance.”

For this project, Walker wanted to get true candids and capture humanity un-posed, unaware of observation. It was 1938, before security and “reality TV” surveillance became ubiquitous. It was also illegal to take photos on the subway. Hence, there were some practical challenges to surmount- the shooting itself was a random stabbing, since Walker had concealed his camera in his coat and could not see what he was getting. “The resulting portraits, of which the sitters were oblivious, were of a quite unprecedented kind, people lost in thought, unaware of being observed, their gazes empty, waiting without expectation,” writes Peter Stepan in Fifty Photographers You Should Know. Michael W. Brooks, in Subway City: Riding the Trains, Reading New York, says, “Evans’ people sit quietly, drawn into themselves…In one sense, they are people who have not yet put on a mask…In another sense, however, they have drawn into themselves against the uproar of their surroundings. They are at once open and on their guard. They are both ordinary and mysterious.”

NY Damage

The result of this endeavour is the collection of portraits published as Many Are Called. But Walker kept this masterpiece under wraps for several decades. “The portraits in these pages were caught by a hidden camera, in the hands of a penitent spy and an apologetic voyeur,” the artist admits with a hint of wry wit. “But the rude and impudent invasion has been carefully softened and partially mitigated by a planned passage of time. These pictures were made twenty years ago and deliberately preserved from publication.”

The artist provides insight into the appeal of the pictures. “As it happens, you don’t see among them the face of a judge or a senator or a bank president. What you do see is at once sobering, startling, and obvious: these are the ladies and gentlemen of the jury.”

That the subway images were collected into a book, like many other Walker works, is no fluke. Walker did not see his photography in singular contexts. Though he preferred to make few changes in the darkroom outside of pragmatic tasks like cropping, he considered editing through curating, layout, and sequencing a vital part of his art. His work was meant to be viewed as series or in photographic essays, in portfolios with accompanying text usually written himself. “Evans had been from the beginning interested in the cumulative meaning of a group of photographs,” writes Jerry L. Thompson in Walker Evans At Work. “For twenty years he used Fortune as his forum, regularly presenting a small group of pictures centered around an idea.”

Once again, the variety of his interests in these series is staggering. One Fortune layout was from a communist summer camp; another was of precise, uncluttered, sharply focused images of tools.  “Sensuous is the word,” he wrote in notes about his plans for this series. “Extremely careful though simple studio photographs. The photographer will assume that a certain monkey wrench is a museum piece.”

In 1936, he exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, a show based on his series of pictures of African sculptures. The MOMA had acquired his collection of 19^th century American houses; Walker also left lists and wrote letters referring to his conceptions for series and sequences which would form the whole of an art piece. Some of these included, “spontaneous display;” “the dude ranch as a thing of beauty;” “pure display. How goods for sale are arrayed naturally, sometimes primitively, everywhere.” In his photo book, American Photographs, from 1938, he wrote, “The reproductions presented in this book are intended to be looked at in their given sequence.”

Certainly Walker was not alone in the concept of the photo essay- Lewis Hines’ had famously done series on child labour in the early 1900s. But it was still a groundbreaking approach. Walker perceived his essays as artistic features.

“The unappreciated artist is at once very humble and very arrogant, too,” Walker said in the Aperture Foundation’s Photography Speaks. “He collects and edits the world about him.” Walker’s work as art was the integral theme of his life. Indeed, his work and art were definitive of his identity. In a sense, there is no Walker Evans “behind the camera.” There was no such separation. As his peer stated, Walker practically was the camera.

In this same book, Walker states, “I think what I am doing is valid and worth doing, and I use the word transcendent. That’s very pretentious, but if I’m satisfied that something transcendent shows in a photograph I’ve done…it’s there, I’ve done it…That’s a hell of a thing to believe, but I believe it or I couldn’t act. It’s a very exciting, heady thing.”

Perhaps it’s not even fair to say, “there’s more to the man than his work,” although of course his life was filled with people and events just like anyone else’s. It is not surprising that he was entirely self-taught as a photographer.  It feels irrelevant to report that he was born in Missouri in 1903 or that he studied French literature or that he worked, briefly, as a clerk on Wall Street.  Walker had early ambitions to be a writer, and he did write, for such prominent publications as Time Magazine. He described himself as an “almost pathological bibliophile,” and esteemed literary influences such as Proust and Shakespeare and Eliot and e.e. cummings.  He associated with figures like Hart Crane and Ernest Hemingway. These are all significant details, yet they seem almost superfluous in the Walker Evans narrative. Perhaps this is because, in his story, the details really just reflect the same longing to observe the world. Reading, writing, photography- all of it, in Walker’s case, show and tell.

Walker even joined the bohemian bandwagon and went to Paris in the ‘20s to hobnob with the beautiful and the damned. He had a wild time, he said. But even so, he was a man apart. Though like every other expatriate and Parisian, he loved drinking and philosophizing about art and literature, he found the whole scene tedious and was sickened by  “moneyed, leisured, frivolous, superficial American” shtick of the F. Scott Fitzgerald-era glitterati.

His friendship with Hemingway happened while on assignment for the Cuba book, and involved plenty of drinking, of course.  MOMA’s John Szarkowski described Walker’s work as “puritanically economical, precisely measured, frontal, unemotional, dryly textured, insistently factual,” qualities that undoubtedly appealed to the surly writer. After Hemingway’s suicide, it was discovered that he owned a small collection of unseen, unpublished Walker photographs that had been given to him during their time in Cuba.

Part Two of  The Man Who Was Really a Camera: America’s Great Walker Evans.

Visit Lorette C. Luzajic at Ideafountain.