Walker Evans
Walker Evans was an American photographer best known for his work on documenting the effects of the Great Depression.
Throughout his career mainly used the large-format, 8x10-inch camera.
The Walker Evans Shoot that I am looking at is his 'Subway Portraits' taken In 1938.
Evans created this photo shoot by sitting in a New York subway car with his camera hung around his neck and hidden beneath his coat with the lens sticking out from between two buttons of his coat. Evans rigged the shutter to a cable release that traveled down his sleeve and into his hand. Evans took a series of photographs of the people riding the subway that day, capturing peoples expressions and activity while on the subway.
Evans did this shoot without the consent of the public around them so it was difficult to use his camera without getting caught, he could not use a flash as this would of alert the subjects being photographed he solved this problem by having a longer exposure to compensate for the low lighting. Another problem that Evans had was that he could not look through the viewfinder because he hid his camera in his coat so he had to guess where his camera was aiming and focused to. Because of the long exposures, the movement of the subway cart and no way to see the subject through the camera, Evans had a very short window in which he could take photos, he took these while the train was at station.
'For Evans, the subway portraits were an attempt to capture the ultimate purity of a recording method without human interference'.
Evans' reasons for this shoot will come in useful to my project documenting life as it will not have influence from the photographer so he is capturing what is actually happening.
Walker Evans Inspired Photoshoot
These are my photos inspired by Walker Evans' subway photoshoot
Development
For my Walker Evans development I am going to take the images and use alternative editing software to edit them to the style of Evans' Subway shoot.
The software I will be using is Instagram, I will use Instagram because of it's preset effects and its simplicity to manipulate photos and still look high quality.
The software I will be using is Instagram, I will use Instagram because of it's preset effects and its simplicity to manipulate photos and still look high quality.