He is one of the most influential artist in the twentieth century and the progenitor of the documentary style in American photography. Walker Evans’ personal cause was art for art’ sake, of which he never lost sight. Even after he was hired at the FSA's Information Division, he wrote "I never make a photographic statement or do photographic chores for the government, no matter how powerful it may be. They are authentic documents, not propaganda…they don’t involve any political genre". The significance of Evan's work is difficult to overstate. Evans focused on photographing signs of all shape and sizes. Through exploring signs he affirmed his appeal to anonymous art and laid the foundations of valorizing symbols of mass marketing. Evans's work explores simultaneously the semantic poverty of signs, their poetic power and its unexpected appearance in the landscape.
REF: WE12HNBP02
Source : Library of Congress
