Walker Evans, the eminent American photographer, who taught photography at Yale until his retirement several years ago, talks informally with today’s students about his life, his art and the mysteries of the creative process…
“Part of a photographer’s gift should be with people. You can do some wonderful work if you know how to make people understand what you’re doing and feel all right about it, and you can do terrible work if you put them on the defense, which they all are at the beginning. You’ve got to take them off their defensive attitude and make them participate.”
You talk about yourself rebelling against the Establishment and about the misfortunes of Depression times, but your photographs are not critical. I find them more of a glorification—glorification of the plain and simple reality.
W.E.: I’m pleased to hear you say that, because I didn’t like the label that I unconsciously earned of being a social protest artist. I never took it upon myself to change the world. And those contemporaries of mine who were going around falling for the idea that they were going to bring down the United States government and make a new world were just asses to me….
The rest of this great 2011 interview is here.
More about Walker Evans and writer James Agee is here and here.
