Subway Portrait 1938 - 1941

This silvery photograph shows a suited man with his hands clasped, shot by Walker Evans on the subway. The image has a casual, candid feel, like it was almost stolen. It's a seemingly simple portrait, but Evans's eye elevates it. I feel for Evans, you know? The guy's on the subway, sees this person, and suddenly there's this urge to capture it, to freeze that moment. I wonder what caught his eye? Was it the geometry of the clasped hands, or the way the man's hat creates this funny shape against the background? The limited tonal range gives the image a sense of timelessness, like it could be from any era. Evans’s work makes me think about the photographs of someone like August Sander, who also tried to capture ordinary people doing their thing. There's a sense of shared humanity, a quiet observation of everyday life. So much of art is seeing what others don’t, or maybe, what others choose to ignore.