EBOOK
About
Svetlana Alpers is professor emerita of history of art at the University of California, Berkeley, and a visiting scholar in art history at New York University. Her many books include The Art of Describing, The Vexations of Art, and Roof Life. She lives in New York City and France.
A magisterial study of celebrated photographer Walker Evans
Walker Evans (1903–75) was a great American artist photographing people and places in the United States in unforgettable ways. He is known for his work for the Farm Security Administration, addressing the Great Depression, but what he actually saw was the diversity of people and the damage of the long Civil War. In Walker Evans, renowned art historian Svetlana Alpers explores how Evans made his distinctive photographs. Delving into a lavish selection of Evans's work, Alpers uncovers rich parallels between his creative approach and those of numerous literary and cultural figures, locating Evans within the wide context of a truly international circle.
Alpers demonstrates that Evans's practice relied on his camera choices and willingness to edit multiple versions of a shot, as well as his keen eye and his distant straight-on view of visual objects. Illustrating the vital role of Evans's dual love of text and images, Alpers places his writings in conversation with his photographs. She brings his techniques into dialogue with the work of a global cast of important artists-from Flaubert and Baudelaire to Elizabeth Bishop and William Faulkner-underscoring how Evans's travels abroad in such places as France and Cuba, along with his expansive literary and artistic tastes, informed his quintessentially American photographic style.
A magisterial account of a great twentieth-century artist, Walker Evans urges us to look anew at the act of seeing the world-to reconsider how Evans saw his subjects, how he saw his photographs, and how we can see his images as if for the first time. "Alpers's interest in the 'unique' work of Walker Evans is an interest in the 'making' of the photographs rather than in their interpretation: her approach is slow, patient, fastidious, detail-oriented, appreciative and illuminating. . . . It is really Starting from Scratch that is a 'unique' work: a close reading of classic photographs by a discerning eye (Alpers's) that conjoins the instructional with the intimate, the scholarship of the historian with the candour of the memoirist. . . . A brilliant and, indeed, thrilling final chapter . . . considers the phenomenon of 'late style' as it relates to artists other than Walker Evans"---Joyce Carol Oates, Times Literary Supplement "Warm and sympathetic . . . really a wonderful biography."---Joyce Carol Oates, Times Literary Supplement Podcast "[A] superb book."---Richard Meyer, Artforum "Starting From Scratch is well researched, and Alpers's heavily quotational approach provides the reader a wealth of material from Evans's letters, lectures, published texts, and personal writings."---Rahel Aima, The Nation "Svetlana Alpers's biography takes a chronological approach to the life of an artist. . . . But before the text explores Walker's aspirations, tastes, travels, career highs and love of the written word, the reader is presented with an uninterrupted 143 full-page reproductions of Evans's photographs-an invitation to appraise the work before engaging with the man." "[A] brilliant scholar of Dutch painting's take on an artist whose work has moved and inspired me for years."---Ayad Akhtar, Elle.com "A fresh consideration of Evans's pictures. . . . Engaging."---Brian Sholis, Aperture "A fresh, scholarly look-complete with more than 200 images-at the seminal American photographer, this time through the lens of fine art and literature. In a lavishly illustrated narrative bolstered by impassioned research, art historian Alpers reintroduces readers to Walker Evans (1903-1975), one of America's great artistic observers . .
A magisterial study of celebrated photographer Walker Evans
Walker Evans (1903–75) was a great American artist photographing people and places in the United States in unforgettable ways. He is known for his work for the Farm Security Administration, addressing the Great Depression, but what he actually saw was the diversity of people and the damage of the long Civil War. In Walker Evans, renowned art historian Svetlana Alpers explores how Evans made his distinctive photographs. Delving into a lavish selection of Evans's work, Alpers uncovers rich parallels between his creative approach and those of numerous literary and cultural figures, locating Evans within the wide context of a truly international circle.
Alpers demonstrates that Evans's practice relied on his camera choices and willingness to edit multiple versions of a shot, as well as his keen eye and his distant straight-on view of visual objects. Illustrating the vital role of Evans's dual love of text and images, Alpers places his writings in conversation with his photographs. She brings his techniques into dialogue with the work of a global cast of important artists-from Flaubert and Baudelaire to Elizabeth Bishop and William Faulkner-underscoring how Evans's travels abroad in such places as France and Cuba, along with his expansive literary and artistic tastes, informed his quintessentially American photographic style.
A magisterial account of a great twentieth-century artist, Walker Evans urges us to look anew at the act of seeing the world-to reconsider how Evans saw his subjects, how he saw his photographs, and how we can see his images as if for the first time. "Alpers's interest in the 'unique' work of Walker Evans is an interest in the 'making' of the photographs rather than in their interpretation: her approach is slow, patient, fastidious, detail-oriented, appreciative and illuminating. . . . It is really Starting from Scratch that is a 'unique' work: a close reading of classic photographs by a discerning eye (Alpers's) that conjoins the instructional with the intimate, the scholarship of the historian with the candour of the memoirist. . . . A brilliant and, indeed, thrilling final chapter . . . considers the phenomenon of 'late style' as it relates to artists other than Walker Evans"---Joyce Carol Oates, Times Literary Supplement "Warm and sympathetic . . . really a wonderful biography."---Joyce Carol Oates, Times Literary Supplement Podcast "[A] superb book."---Richard Meyer, Artforum "Starting From Scratch is well researched, and Alpers's heavily quotational approach provides the reader a wealth of material from Evans's letters, lectures, published texts, and personal writings."---Rahel Aima, The Nation "Svetlana Alpers's biography takes a chronological approach to the life of an artist. . . . But before the text explores Walker's aspirations, tastes, travels, career highs and love of the written word, the reader is presented with an uninterrupted 143 full-page reproductions of Evans's photographs-an invitation to appraise the work before engaging with the man." "[A] brilliant scholar of Dutch painting's take on an artist whose work has moved and inspired me for years."---Ayad Akhtar, Elle.com "A fresh consideration of Evans's pictures. . . . Engaging."---Brian Sholis, Aperture "A fresh, scholarly look-complete with more than 200 images-at the seminal American photographer, this time through the lens of fine art and literature. In a lavishly illustrated narrative bolstered by impassioned research, art historian Alpers reintroduces readers to Walker Evans (1903-1975), one of America's great artistic observers . .