Ledgers 1953

This is a photograph by Walker Evans showing a row of ledgers next to a metal cabinet. It's a black and white image, probably made with a large format camera. I wonder what Evans was thinking when he made this? It’s so different to painting, where you are building and destroying at the same time. Here, Evans just frames what’s there. And yet, by doing that, he also constructs something new. It's almost like a kind of readymade, in the Duchampian sense, where the artist selects an object and elevates it to the status of art. I think he saw something beautiful in these mundane objects. The texture of the book bindings, the typography, the placement of the ledgers, the way the light falls on them. It's all about finding the extraordinary in the ordinary. Evans must have been having a conversation with those European surrealists. I can imagine him finding inspiration in their work.