House, Upstate New York 1931

Walker Evans made this photograph of a house in Upstate New York, and well, there isn't a date. The gray scale tones make it look almost like a pencil drawing! I am always fascinated by Evans’ work because of its surface clarity. The details of the facade, like the columns flanking the windows and the triangular pediment, are captured with incredible precision. The texture of the wood, the subtle variations in tone—it’s all right there. Yet, there's a kind of ambiguity too, in that there is no clear subject matter. It is an image of a house, but it also feels like it could be an image about surface, about structure, about America. Evans' way of seeing makes me think of other photographers who also find beauty and complexity in the everyday, like Stephen Shore, and I guess that's art, an ongoing conversation across time.