AD5808: Walker Evans

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

Let us now Praise Famous Men is a book where the text has been written by the American writer, James Agee and the photos have been taken by American photographer, Walker Evans. The book is based on the daily lives of farmers and their families during the depression era. The book includes a range of photos, however i will be looking in to the landscapes from this project and the format of it.

Agee describes one of the rickety houses inhabited by a tenant family: “A hollow altar, temple, or poor shrine, a human shelter, which for the space of a number of seasons shall hold this shape of earth denatured: yet in whose history this house shall have passed soft and casually as a snowflake fallen on black spring ground, which thaws in touching.”

In these photos the photographer has focused on the state of the nature and the buildings. This could be relating to the impacts of the great depression. The ideas that are expressed in the book can be seen through the way the landscape is described. This is because you see the building in the photo as more of just a wooden building that is falling apart. The aim for my project is to show the impacts of humans on the natural landscape through building houses. These photos relate to my own photos as i will also be focusing on singular houses. This can be seen in one of my more recent photos where i have looked at a building within a large amount of feelings. This is my more modernised version of looking at farming land and the nature around it.