Subway Portrait

Description

From 1938 to 1941, Walker Evans descended into the New York City subways with a camera hidden under his jacket and a cable trigger up his sleeve. Without allowing his subjects to be aware of his intentions, he captured candid portraits of eighty-two people. Citing the nineteenth century painting “Third Class Carriage” by Honoré Daumier as his inspiration, Evans sought to record people in a realm that leveled society, freeing them from their class statuses and their constant state of self-awareness. In a draft that he prepared in anticipation for the publication of these images Evans wrote, “The portraits on these pages were caught by a hidden camera, in the hands of a penitent spy and an apologetic voyeur.”