A COLLECTION of iconic photographs illustrating a pivotal point in American history are currently on display in Colwyn Bay.
During the Great American Depression of 1935-36, Missouri-born photographer Walker Evans (1903-1975) embarked on a photographic project that would produce some of the striking images in the history of photography.
This new Hayward Touring exhibition brings together around 40 black and white prints, reflecting rural working life in the southern states of America.
Selected by Jeff L. Rosenheim, associate curator of photography at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the exhibition comes to Colwyn Bay Library as part of a UK tour.
Evans was employed as an ‘Information Specialist’ in President Franklin D Roosevelt’s Resettlement (later Farm Security) Administration.
He was commissioned alongside other eminent photographers of the time including Dorothea Lange and Arthur Rothstein to record the work of the FSA’s rehabilitation programme, as well as to document the daily lives of farmers and flood victims.
He travelled to Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and South Carolina photographing churches, graveyards, busy streets, shops, cafes, signs and billboards as well as making more intimate portraits of family life.
He also recorded interiors and exteriors of sharecroppers’ homes, group portraits and the famous close-up portraits of the Burroughs family.
These disquieting, provocative images are seen by many as the culmination of Evans’ photographic career, capturing the expressions of the weak and vulnerable and showing the fragility of their existence.
An exhibition book will be displayed alongside his photographs, featuring examples of his own writing, interview excerpts and articles written by James Agee and Lincoln Kirstein.
These photographs are archival prints duplicated from the Farm Security Administration Collection in the Library of Congress, Washington.
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Walker Evans: Photographs 1935-1936 will be showing at Colwyn Bay Library until February 7.