Photo of the Week #315

September 16, 2024
Walker Evans’ documentary style of photography is inseparable from his embrace of the seemingly endless variations to be found in North America’s Victorian architecture. In 1931 he began making photographs for a book devoted to 19th-century architecture in New England. While working on this project, Evans developed a clear-eyed working method that allowed the focus of his pictures to remain firmly on the architectural features of the buildings, often returning multiple times in a day, waiting for the light to fall in a way that clearly articulated the building’s structure and ornament. While the final book was never realized, his “Victorian Series” of photographs established his reputation when it was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in 1933—the first one-person photography exhibition staged by a major museum.

Evans made this photograph in the town of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, and it depicts the Lunenburg Academy, a building that served as the town’s public primary school. The building is emblematic of a time when North America’s school system was transitioning from single room school houses to larger academies, and architects were embracing eclecticism, borrowing liberally from a wide range of historic styles. Evans pulls his camera back, documenting both the building and its dramatic placement on the site, capturing how the wonderfully detailed wooden structure rises improbably from the paved schoolyard. His choice to shoot in misty conditions emphasizes the building's dense form and mass. Throughout Evans’ career he maintained his interest in regional and vernacular architecture, creating pictures that were imbued with the sense that there were always new examples to discover and affectionately record.