The Lewis Baltz Library - Steidl

Photograph America
Henri Cartier-Bresson / Walker Evans
“If it had not been for the challenge of the work of Walker Evans, I don’t think I would have remained a photographer.”
Henri Cartier-Bresson, 2001
Walker Evans and Henri Cartier-Bresson belong to the same generation and shared an insatiable intellectual
curiosity. Their works had been exhibited together in 1935 at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York and they shared a
period working in America when Cartier-Bresson spent 18 months between 1946 and 1947 preparing his show at the
Museum of Modern Art. To make a living Cartier-Bresson worked for magazines like Harper’s Bazaar, but he soon
decided to work on a long-term project with a writer and to publish a book that was never realised. Walker Evans had
already published American Photographs in 1938, Let us Now Praise Famous Men, with James Agee, in 1941 and was
working on Many Are Called, which would only be published in 1966. This book draws a parallel between the work
about America made by Evans and Cartier-Bresson in the period from 1930 to 1947. As John Szarkowski argued, “Evans
defined in his work the essence of the documentary aesthetic.” Cartier-Bresson, on the other hand, was making a fresh
start, leaving behind his work in moving imagery and fully embracing a career as a stills photographer. But they were both
approaching their work as a form of social criticism, imbued with references to literature and painting. Their photographs
were distinctly different though: the frontality and the distance of Evans towards his own country, compared to the Frenchman’s
diagonals centred on the human being, who was exploring a territory that was still new to him.
Walker Evans (1903-1975) discovered photography in Paris in the late 1920s when he wanted to become a writer.
When he returned to America he became one of the prominent members of the Farm Security Administration in the
1930s. In 1938, his book American Photographs was published and became a cult classic. Later, Evans worked for
magazines (The Times and Fortune) and taught photography at Yale.
Henri Cartier-Bresson’s (1908-2004) first passion was painting. He started taking photographs in the late 1920s, turned
to cinematography in the 1930s and then back to still photography in the 1940s. In 1947 he created Magnum Photos
with Robert Capa, David Seymour and George Rodger. In the 1970s he decided to go back to painting.
In 2002, he established the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris.
Exhibition: Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, 10 September to December, 2008 in celebration of Henri Cartier-
Bresson’s centenary
Co-published with Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris
Photograph America
Henri Cartier-Bresson / Walker Evans
Edited and Introduction by Agnès Sire
Text by Jean-François Chevrier
Book design by Steidl Design
160 pages with 120 tritone plates
7.8 x 9.4 in./20 x 24 cm
Clothbound hardcover with dust jacket
US$50.00/£25.00/€35.00
ISBN 978-3-86521-680-9
109