Without the Arno, Florence would be like Romolo - The Florentine

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Thursday 8 February 2007
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News & Views
Stark contrasts
Photo exhibit captures trials of Great Depression
by Richard Keenan
The current exhibit of the photographs by Walker Evans at the Museo
Nazionale Alinari della Fotografi a offers a view of cultural history
largely forgotten by the current generation, for whom the United
States has always been a formidable world power. The Great Depression
of the 1930s, which lasted the better part of a decade and ended only with
America’s entry into World War II, saw much of America’s rural population
struggling to subsist without adequate food, housing or jobs. These
photographs fi rst came to public attention in Let Us Now Praise Famous
Men, the book Evans created thanks to a collaborative effort with James
Agee. Agee’s text juxtaposed with Evan’s stark, black and white photographs
offers eloquent testimony to those troubled times.
Most of the photographs in the current exhibit were taken between
1935 and 1937, when Evans and Agee were traveling through the southern
United States, subsidized by the Farm Security Administration, one of
the many government agencies created by President Franklin Roosevelt to
address the problems facing the American economy. One noteworthy work
is Penny Picture Display (1936), a collage of photographs taken by the
machines commonly found at carnivals and amusement arcades. There are
some fi fty photographs in the collage of men, women and children. Well-fed,
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smiling, unafraid of
the future, these
happy faces are in
stark contrast with
the faces of tenant
farmers and
sharecroppers, who are clearly malnourished, poorly clothed and certainly
unsmiling. Sharecropper Family (1936), taken in Hale Country, Alabama,
depicts a family of four—a man, two women and a child. Clearly worn down
by the circumstances of barely subsistent living, they remain stoic and resolute
nonetheless.
Perhaps the most poignant photograph in the exhibit is Child’s Grave
(1936), depicting a simple mound of sandy soil with a set of construction
stones at either end and a small dinner plate placed in the center. This
nameless child, otherwise forgotten by history, is effectively captured by
Evan’s photographic sensitivity and perception. The exhibit, rounded out by
various scenes from other parts of Depression-era America, includes several
noteworthy photographs of the Brooklyn Bridge published in 1994.