Street Scene: Vicksburg, Mississippi

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Street Scene: Vicksburg, Mississippi

Artist Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)

DateMarch, 1936

DimensionsOverall: 9 1/16 x 9 7/8 in. (23 x 25.1 cm)

MediumSilverprint

ClassificationPhotographs

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey

Object number

1980.1337

Not on View

Label TextWalker Evans, considered one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and spent much of his childhood in Toledo, Ohio. He attended Williams College in Massachusetts. In 1927, after taking a year in Europe to study and write, Evans returned to the U.S. and gradually began a career in photography. This image is one of a series of photographs that he made for the Farm Security Administration in 1936, an organization established by the Roosevelt administration to improve the lives of the rural poor during the Great Depression. Walker’s photographs for the FSA were among the finest produced under that program and his images of Southern sharecroppers came to symbolize the fortitude and dignity of a people suffering through the Depression. This image of a Vicksburg, Mississippi, street demonstrates Evans’ ability to ‘document’ without sentimentality. The subtle arrangement of glowing bands of white shingles, sidewalk, and window frames is interlocked with the dark accents of the curb, the weathered walls, and the diagonals of sunlight and shade and the barber pole’s stripes. More than elements in a carefully worked out composition, the people provide a dignified counterpoint to the shabby storefront. .Exhibition History

Toledo Museum of Art, Past and Present: Photographs from the Permanent Collection, Jan 22 - June 8, 1999.

Toledo Museum of Art, Recent Acquisitions: Prints, Drawings, & llustrated Books, Jan. 22, - June 24, 1983.

Toledo Museum of Art, Refraction/Reflection, April 20-September 2, 2012.

Toledo Museum of Art, People Get Ready: 50 Years of Civil Rights, Jun. 27-Sept. 21, 2014.