Floyd Burroughs' Bedroom 1936

Walker Evans made this photograph, "Floyd Burroughs' Bedroom," at an unknown date with a camera. The bareness of this room, those metal beds, and the white sheets. It’s hard to look at, isn’t it? You start to think about touch and the body—the feel of the metal against your skin, or the sheets, probably thin and worn. There's a gun hanging on the wall. It's a very direct kind of space. I wonder what Evans was thinking when he made this image. What does it mean to make this kind of image? It's not posed. It’s like he just walked in and caught it like this. I guess that makes it ‘real,’ but what is real anyway? What does it mean to look at this room? It feels so exposed, so vulnerable. Photography is a way of seeing that can be so invasive. But at the same time, he made it into art. It’s thought-provoking, this tension.