How France Shaped Walker Evans’s American Vision
From grizzled cotton farmers to quiet small-town scenes of buildings and signs, Walker Evans built his reputation on chronicling America’s out-of-the-way places and people.
A turning point for Evans was his decision — like many young men of means — to go to Paris in 1926 to study for a year at the Sorbonne. His stay filled his head with ideas gleaned from Flaubert and Baudelaire, but it was another Frenchman — Eugène Atget — whose work affected him the most, leading to the dry, observational style that became his visual signature.