Walker Evans: photo books, poetry and jazz

This is about Walker Evans. I first saw his pictures in the book he did with James Agee, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. The book was published in 1941. I probably read it some time in the 1960s, probably after I’d come home from the Peace Corps in Senegal and was trying to catch up on the country I’d grown up in but really didn’t know very well. Looking at Evans’ photographs in that book was probably the first time I’d seen white Southern poverty.

I’ve seen those images of the Hale County, Alabama, tenant farm families a number of times since. But it’s almost as if I didn’t need to. Their impact was such that I can just about recall them to memory if I stop for a second: the tiny, precarious wooden houses; the children barely clothed; their parents, some with impressive dignity, some bent and worn away like old trees on an exposed hillside.

This summer, I missed, by just a few days, a large Evans retrospective at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. The exhibit moved on from there to San Francisco. But I’m not likely to get out there before it closes next February. So I did the next best thing: I went to my shelves and pulled out two books on Evans I’d accumulated but never read

One is a retrospective of Evans’ work covering nearly 50 years, from the late 1920s until shortly before he died in 1976. The Hungry Eye was put together by Gilles Mora and John T. Hill and published in 1993. The other book is American Photographs, the book Evans published at the time of his 1938 exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art. 

Mora and Hill made me aware of just how important American Photographs has been in the history of photography. And now I regret even more missing the Pompidou show. I would have liked to seen what critics make of the book these days.

American Photographs is often credited with being the true first photo book, in the sense that it wasn’t just a collection of images held between two covers. With the selection of the photos, and especially their sequencing, Evans wanted to convey something more general, something independent of the individual photos and their content. Hill, in a short essay in one of the editions of American Photographs, says that Evans sequencing created something analogous to poetry.  The idea is, perhaps, that the individual images are the language — the words and phrases — that Evans uses, as he decides on placement and order, to create additional meaning.

If that’s true, like some poetry, I’ll probably need several readings before the meaning appears. But maybe, rather than poetry, jazz would be a better metaphor for a carefully and intentionally created photo book. In this sense, you could say Evans starts off with a recognizable theme and carries it along for a bit. Then, there’s a chord change and perhaps a series of unexpected rearrangements of what he started with. Maybe later there’s even a key change and a different kind of development. At the end, the piece may or may not circle back to where it started. 

Still, even if I don’t always follow where Evans is going in American Photographs, I’m absorbed in the music. And I already have some of the tunes in my head.

Paris Photo

I was struck when I looked back and realized that I started this blog five years ago. It’s been mostly dormant for the last two years, but I did manage to post at least a couple of things each year. So to keep things going, here’s at least one post for 2017.

I’m wishing I could be in Paris this weekend. The annual Paris Photo event is going on at the Grand Palais. It started on Thursday and continues through until tomorrow, the 12th. Rather than being an exhibit, it’s an art market devoted just to photography. Galleries have a chance to feature their artists and visitors have a chance to gauge what’s going on in this part of the art world. I imagine it can be overwhelming. According to Claire Guillot, reporting on the show in Le Monde, the trend this year is away from large format, color images that predominated in recent years, and towards smaller format, black and white images. One gallery rep Guillot talked to suggested that buyers have simply run out of room on their walls. Guillot also noted a large presentation of documentary photographs, many from the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Consistent with the idea of documentation, many galleries, rather than featuring individual images, are showing collections of images by a photographer that are part of a series. She was particularly impressed by Susan Meiselas’ 1970s photos of “Carnival Strippers” (examples in this photo).

© Nicolas Krief for Le Monde

Guillot also mentions several photographers that are entirely new to me: Ilse Bing, Matthais Bruggmann, Karlheinz Weinberger, Chris Killip, Tom Wood, Barbara Crane. From quick looks on Google Images, several have made some striking photos.

"Rick" and "Ilsa"

I went out the back door the other day thinking I’d walk down the alley and maybe around the block, looking for something to follow the last photo note. Just on the back steps I noticed our two friends here down by the lavender.

They were birthday presents to Lynda -- was it in 2013 when I was riding along the Loire and wasn’t home to celebrate?  I think she enjoys them, but we never gave them names. I thought maybe it was time to do that. At first, it seemed the names should be German. I considered “Jürgen” and “Josefa.” “Jürgen” because I like both Jürgen Klinsmann and Jürgen Klopp, even though neither at all looks like the male figure here. And “Josefa” for no better reason than it starts with “J” and seems to go well with Jürgen. I mentioned the names to Lynda at dinner.  She didn’t go for either. So later, I went to the internet looking for possible famous movie couples. After more discussion, we finally agreed that our garden protectors would now be know as “Rick” and “Ilsa.” We both like the names. The air was chilly when I took the picture and Ilsa looks anxious, possibly remembering how the two of them ended up covered in snow last January. By contrast, Rick looks relaxed, focused on something, but not obviously worried about the coming winter.

Lost Cat

Someone tacked up several of these notices on poles around the neighborhood. I’ve sometimes thought I should pick out little things around the neighborhood to record. I walk back and forth to the

Metro on this sidewalk; we visit the neighbors down the alley; I occasionally walk to stores on Wisconsin or Connecticut Avenues. But I rarely pay much attention to things along the way.  The notices about the missing cat have, I think, been on the poles for several months. They might even have replaced some put up earlier. I’ve never seen the calico cat described here. In fact, I’ve rarely seen any cats loose outside; I’ve probably seen more rabbits than cats; in fact, I know I have. Did anyone ever call this number? Was the searcher ever reunited with the cat? A happy or sad ending?

Restoration in the Loire estuary

At the beginning of September, early in the morning, a group of government officials with responsibilities for the Loire invited the press out to La Varenne, a small town on the left bank about a half hour drive upstream from Nantes.  The journalists had been invited to a presentation of a complex contract among multiple parties to begin to try to fix serious problems in the river.

Since the early 20th century public authorities, employing multiple methods, concentrated the flow of water, to deepen the channel and maintain the port at Nantes.  The methods included closing off secondary arms as they passed around islands, constructing hundreds of wing dams, mining sand and gravel from the main channel, and eliminating a rocky underwater sill at Bellevue, just above Nantes.

A secondary arm blocked off.

From GIP Loire-Estuaire press kit,

2 September 2015

All this turned out to be too successful.  The force of the channelized water has been scouring out the river bottom to the extent that the measured low water mark at Nantes is 3.5 meters (11.48 feet) below the mark at the beginning of the 20th century.  This has undermined docks, bridges and riverbanks.  It has threatened, and in some cases eliminated, habitats around secondary arms and oxbow lakes.  Concentrating the river also opened it up to tidal effects.  Initially, tidal salt water would advance to a point just below Nantes.  These days, it has pushed a further 35 km (22 miles) up to Ancenis.  Drinking water utilities for Nantes and other towns have had to likewise move upstream for their supplies.

Since at least 2002, a special purpose public agency, the GIP (Groupement d'intérêt public) Loire-Estuaire has been looking for ways to halt the scouring and perhaps reverse the process.  They want to slow down the flow so more suspended material can be deposited; they also want to reconnect the river with old secondary branches.  The GIP has experimented with reducing or taking down the wing dams, creating artiificial sills, and using heavy equipment to reconnect the river to previoiusly blocked off parts.

Over the next two years, the first phase of restoration work is expected to cost 6.92 million euros ($7.4 million). This figure is expected to increase to 18 million euros ($19.2 million) during the 2018-2020 phase, primarily for work filling in the main channel.  Eventually over the full 15 years envisioned for the project the restoration should cost in the neighborhood of 62 million euros ($66 million).

As encouraging and really exciting as all of this is, I have to say something about the arrangements for management and oversight.  For a country known for its centralized administration, the arrangements are complicated, to say the least.  The press document prepared at the beginning of September includes a long list of “actors in the contract.”  These include major actors like the Agence d’eau Loire-Bretagne, the Region, the State, the GIP Loire Estuaire, and the Conservatoire d’espaces naturels des Pays de la Loire.  But they also include individual towns and groups of towns along the river.  A diagram shows these all grouped within a Commission des acteurs de la Loire, tied to a (presumably) executive Comité de pilotage, itself connected to a Comité des procédures (directed by the prefet of the department of the Loire-Atlantique) and a Comité technique (including technical experts).  But where are the authorizing and funding agencies?  How can they be held accountable for use of public funds in an arrangement that appears to make it difficult to do so ?

A paddle wheeler on the Loire

Consider a new way to see the heart of France.  In April, the European river tour company, CroisiEurope, began offering voyages along the Loire.  Its brand new Loire Princesse, with very comfortable looking accommodations for about 100, promises travelers views along the river from Saint Nazaire on the Atlantic up to Angers and its famous chateau, a distance of about 150 km or just over 90 miles.

Map: Ouest France

The ship, built in the Saint-Nazaire shipyards, was specially designed to accommodate the often shallow and unpredictable river.  It’s 90 meters long by 15 meters wide (about 300 feet by 50 feet), but draws only 80 centimeters (2.6 feet) of water and, rather than propellers, is driven by side paddle wheels.  The Loire Princesse may be the first passenger ship on the river since the early steam-powers ships of the mid-19th century, the curiously-named inexplosibles.

Photo: Bernard Biger

But this year, according to an mid-summer article in the Nantes newspaper, Ouest France, the river turned out to be even more unpredictable than CroisiEurope anticipated.  An especially dry summer meant a shallower river than anticipated, so much so that several times even the 80 centimeter draft was too much and the ship ran aground.  And it was discovered that dealing with the current, when squeezed between bridge footing, required more push than the paddle wheels could manage.  The company had to call in tugs for an occasional extra push.

Contacted by Ouest France, environmentalists in the area seemed mildly bemused.  Tourism in the river isn’t necessarily a bad thing they said.  It could build appreciation for the area's natural beauty.  They’re concerned, though, that as the ship's difficulties get resolved that it be the one to adapt to the river and not the reverse.  That makes good sense.  Meanwhile, it will be interesting to follow how this all works out.

Dredging and the Nantes-Saint-Nazaire Port

The Grand Port Maritime de Nantes et Saint-Nazaire (GPM) is likely the most important economic actor in the Loire estuary.  Along the stretch of the river from the Atlantic Ocean to Nantes, the GPM is responsible for nearly 25,000 jobs.  The Saint-Nazaire-Nantes complex is France’s fourth largest port with nearly 27 million tons of goods passing in and out, 90 percent of which involves facilities at Saint-Nazaire along the north side of the river.  

Portion of Saint-Nazaire Port with Airbus transport ship in the foreground

Last week, as required by French law, the GPM published its strategic plan for the next five years, including plans for 170 million euros in new investments.  Clearly almost anything the Port does will have implications for the estuary environment.  And the planning document doesn’t ignore this.  Virtually a third of its 60 pages are given to “spacial planning and sustainable development” (aménagement et développement durable).

I’ll probably come back to the Port and to more of this document, but right now I just want to highlight one element.  That has to do with dredging.  To provide access to larger ships, the Port dredges along the docks and out into the Atlantic.  It also clears out the channel at several critical points upstream for ships going to the few port facilities at Nantes.

Multiple studies have identified a severe drop in the river’s low-water level as the most serious environmental issue in the estuary.  The combination of sand and gravel extraction, wing dams to concentrate water flow, and dredging to provide ship access has caused the river to dig deeper and deeper into its bed.  Near Angers the bed is about six and a half feet below what it was in 1900; at Nantes it’s about 12 feet lower.

This has had serious consequences, especially between Les Ponts-de-Cé (on the river just below Angers) and Nantes.  Wetland environments in arms of the river have dried up; bridge pilings have been exposed to erosion; the tidal effect carrying salt water upstream has advanced beyond Nantes requiring that city and others to relocate pipes for drinking water supplies.  A massive silt plug between Saint-Nazaire and Nantes seriously impedes migratory fish like salmon and eels.

The GPM plan does mention dredging and promises “to reduce the environmental impact” but is non-specific beyond that.  Also, it’s quite possible that by “environmental impact” the Port is not even referring the effect on the river bed, but to a separate issue relating to disposal of dredged material.

Meanwhile, it appears that a restoration project aimed at the stretch upstream between Nantes and Les Ponts-de-Cé is finally getting underway.  I’ll say more about this in another post.  For now, it strikes me as unfortunate, to say the least, that the Port’s planning document doesn’t connect to the this project.