Essay by Lincoln Kirstein

 

Walker Evans: American Photographs was first published by The Museum of Modern Art in 1938 in a carefully prepared, deluxe letterpress edition to accompany an exhibition of photographs by Evans that captured scenes of the United States in the early 1930s.

 

It has been out of print for long periods since 1938, and subsequent editions—two of which altered the design and typography of the book in small but significant ways—are often unavailable outside libraries and rare-book stores. This seventy-fifth-anniversary edition re-creates the original as closely as possible with the aid of new digital printing technology, making the landmark publication available for a new generation.

 

More than any other artist, Walker Evans invented the images of an essential America that we have long accepted as fact, and his work has influenced not only modern photography but also literature, film, and visual art in other mediums. 208 pp.; 87 illus.