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Photographs of Alabama by Walker Evans Exhibited at JCSMAUBURN, Ala.-– American Classics: Selected Photographs of Alabama by Walker Evans will be on display June 13, 2008 through August 23, 2008 at the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art. This exhibition features a selection of images made in 1936, when the editors of Fortune magazine sent writer, James Agee and photographer, Walker Evans on assignment to document the southern sharecropping economic system. The exhibition includes silver gelatin prints made from the original negatives on loan to JCSM and archival digital prints made by the Library of Congress from the photographer’s negatives or prints. “The photographs in this exhibition reveal the innate strength and nobility of these Hale County sharecroppers, and by studying them we discover our shared humanity. In many ways Evans’ images have evolved into an impressionable national memory of the Depression era,” said Dr. Marilyn Laufer, museum director. Both Agee and Evans seemed to have challenged the preconceived notions of the editors at Fortune and their work for this assignment was rejected, giving Agee the excuse and opportunity to expand the text and seek out a publisher. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, first published in 1941, was presented as two separate portfolios, with thirty-one of Evans’ images, followed by Agee’s subjective descriptions of the lives and possessions of these farmers interwoven with his complex meditations on the nature of art and culture. Laufer, whose area of expertise is the history of photography, will present a program on Evans and his collaboration with writer James Agee on July 17, 2088 at 5:00 p.m. at the museum. This event is free to the public and will be followed by a reception. Walker Evans was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1903 into an affluent family. In the early 1920s his focus was on writing, while living among the intellectual expatriates of Paris. Returning to New York, Evans turned to photography, earning a solid reputation. In 1935 he was one of the first photographers hired by the federal government’s newly formed Resettlement Administration (later known as the Farm Security Administration or FSA ) to document the effects of the Depression and to promote New Deal programs. Open since 2003, the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art at Auburn University is Alabama’s only university art museum. Serving as the gateway into Auburn University, the museum is home to many pieces of culturally significant art. The collection includes 100 Audubon prints, a rare group of more than 40 Tibetan bronzes dating back from the 14th century and works by important American artists, such as Arthur Dove, Georgia O’Keeffe and Lyonel Feininger. The museum rotunda hangs a three-tiered, hand-blown glass chandelier created especially for the museum by internationally-renowned glass artist Dale Chihuly. The beauty continues onto the grounds of the museum with fifteen acres of gardens, walking paths and water features, complete with an eleven and a half foot tall brass sculpture, Spinoff, created by Auburn alumna Jean Woodham.
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