Chicago 1946

Walker Evans made this photograph, Chicago, at an unknown date, on a small sheet of film. There's a beautiful flatness to this image, a real sense of the street. I love how Evans is framing this woman, who is maybe the main character in the image, with the dark building behind her. This dark, looming, impenetrable mass is so different from the detail of the figures in the foreground; the small, soft details of their faces. And that hat! It has a weight to it. The woman’s gaze is intense, it holds a whole world in it. The light on her face is soft, almost tender. It’s the kind of light you can only get on a specific kind of day, in a specific kind of place. Like a painting by Fairfield Porter, the everyday becomes transcendent. Evans is like Atget in this way, finding the extraordinary in the ordinary. It is something I aspire to in my own practice.