Walker Evans: A Catalog of Photographic Prints Available from the Farm Security Administration Collection 1935-1938 (Da Capo Paperback)

For the hour or two it takes you to browse through this book, you'll be transported back to a time when people looked old beyond their years, paint was hard to find, and dust was everywhere. Yet through the magic of photography, you'll be pulled into these pictures and feel drawn to the people and places they depict. What would it have been like to eat at one of the restaurants shown here, for instance? How many of the young children are still alive, in their late seventies or eighties, and do they know they are captured here forever?

The history of photography is illustrated with a few best hits from a photographer's life work, repeated to the point of being obligatory. (Think Weston, pepper 30 or Evans' family portrait that graces the cover of this book.) But here is a wide enough selection from a broad enough range of space and time to more carefully evaluate the photographer's abilities.