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.

Restoring Sant'Agata

About 5 p.m. yesterday, I took a break from my Italian homework and went for a walk along the south wall of the Città Alta.  I had taken along my camera, but by the time I got up to the walls, the sun was behind the horizon and the only thing that seemed to suggest itself was a group of trees at the top of a part of the wall profiled against what light was left in the sky.  Here’s the picture.

By the time I made it around to the Porta Sant’Alessandro Gate at the west end of the walls, it was completely dark and time to turn into the Città Alta itself and head home.  But I wasn’t in a real hurry and, walking along the Via Colleoni, I stopped in at the Church of Sant’Agata al Carmine.  There wasn’t anything particular to suggest it, but churches always seem to be open and I thought why not.  It turned out to be a mini-lesson in the burdens of maintaining a cultural heritage.

It’s a good-sized baroque church with elaborately decorated chapels and side walls.  The very nice paintings along the arched ceiling showed scenes from Jesus’ life from the Annunciation to the time when he was learning his trade as a carpenter.  Interesting the choice to go only that far.  Although the colors still appeared strong, the ceiling and the paintings were not in good shape.  Several sections showed a white, chalky-looking substance on the surface; possibly damage from water leaking through the roof?

At that point, I gave more attention to a large display panel at the back of the pews, just as you came in the door.  It was an appeal for funds.  The panel explained that the church had been neglected and is now being restored.  It explained that the first phase, already completed, consisted of securing the foundation and walls and installing a modern electrical system.  The cost for this was 328,545 euros, with funds coming from the Italian Episcopal Commission, the Lombardy Region, and HCB, a hotel and entertainment booking company.  The next phase will fix the roof, restore one of the side chapels, and address delayed maintenance.  This is expected to cost 421,444 euros.  So far half of the funds have been pledged by the Cariplo Foundation (related to the Cariplo Bank based in Lombardy); the rest still needs to be raised.

A second, somewhat larger panel on the exit side of the church represented part of the project to raise those funds.  The broad panel, maybe six feet high by nine feet across was a composite of several large color photographs showing the apse and sides of the church.  Over the photos was a lucite cover cover with perhaps several hundred small, rectangular cutouts about two by three inches.  A text explained that contributors to the church’s restoration can buy one (or more) “brick’s” to fill in the empty rectangles.  The minimum contribution is five euros.  As the blanks are filled in the pictures are completed -- and the church is restored.  Yesterday, it seemed that contributors had bought about sixty percent of the bricks.

All this made me think that people responsible for maintaining or restoring baroque churches like this one must curse the original builders and especially the artists who added all the decoration; or maybe more appropriately the patrons who commissioned it.  I wonder if they envy those responsible for gothic churches?

Learning a language

A Google search on "language learning as an adult" seems to produce a lot of links to pieces urging adults to learn a new language.  "You can do it," they seem to say.  "Age and diminished blood flow to the brain are no excuses."

But I was looking for something different, maybe someone's thoughts on all that's involved: the initial reasons; the early struggle to memorize nouns and verb conjugations; the first, halting conversation where real, useful information gets exchanged; the first newspaper article struggled through; the first book completed; and all kinds of other firsts.  And then the continuing entry -- slow or fast -- into the language and with it, possibly, changes in outlook, even, who knows, personality changes.  It's something I'll read if and when I find it.

I think about this at the beginning of my second week in Bergamo, more or less the mid-point of the time I'll be here.  As I've probably already mentioned, I'm taking Italian lessons four days a week, usually in the morning from 9 to 11.  I have a very good teacher, who has been providing a variety of exercises aimed at reviewing certain points of grammar.  These two hours go by pretty quickly as we talk about whatever, review written exercises I've done, and correct the short pieces I've written. 

All of this is quite helpful and useful.  And I sense that I'm becoming a little more at ease in conversations, if only because of my teacher's tolerance and that of the family friends here who've been taking such good care of me.  But I can also appreciate just how much further I need to go before I'll be truly at ease.  And I'm only here for another two weeks.

Meanwhile, here are a couple of street photos from time wandering around the Città Alta and "shooting from the hip."  The main street, the via Gombito and its continuation on the via Colleoni, can be something like a medieval mini-mall when the Bergamaschi come strolling on weekends and holidays.  But it's also an area that I want to know better.  Anyway, here are the photos.

Bergamo photos

It's past time to put up a post.  My Italian lessons have been keeping me busy and I keep finding that the time when I might write something gets used differently.  There's grocery shopping, exploring the Città Alta (Upper City), finding my way around Bergamo proper, and enjoying dinners with the Terzis and their friends.  That has been one of the really special things about this stay.

Anyway, I've been taking pictures here and there, nothing like the number I did during the Umbria photo workshop, but some to record the world seen from my apartment and a little of what I've seen as I've walked around.  So this post, and maybe more, will focus on photographs.

This was the view from my apartment window looking northeast.  The first week I was here, it rained and the temperatures dropped to the low to mid-30s. 

 The next morning when the sun came up, the mountains had what people were saying was the earliest snowfall in the mountains that they could remember.

 A few days later, we finally had sunshine.

 My apartment, the vantage point for the pictures above, is that box on the roof just in front of the bell tower on the church of Sant'Allesandro della Croce, the patron saint of Bergamo.  The pictures were taken from from the left side.  Fortunately, the last bells are at 9 p.m., I think; and they wait until 7 a.m. to restart.  This photo was taken from the wall surrounding the Città Alta, the oldest part of Bergamo.  The street layout in the Città Alta still shows the influence of the original Roman settlers and many of the major buildings -- churches and public buildings -- were built in the medieval and renaissance periods.

 All the rain has made bike rides difficult, but I finally got out last Wednesday afternoon.  I set off without having any particular route; I was riding into the Brembana Valley and hoped, after braving busy roads for a few kilometers, I might be rewarded with some small, lightly-traveled mountain roads.  Not quite.  I made it up to Zogno, here, about 15 km north of Bergamo.  I did manage to find some quiet side roads above the main road running along the river, but not enough of them.  I've now talked to a couple of avid riders who live in the area and know the climbs, so I'm hoping for something better next time out.

Monti and the polls

I've mentioned that I'm trying to get a better sense of Italian politics, to the extent that's possible during a month's visit.  And as part of my Italian lessons I can justify buying a newspaper every day or so.  Luckily, I bought a copy of La Repubblica today and happened on a piece by Massimo Giannini, one of the paper's editors.  He was reviewing most of the first year of Mario Monti's government.

Giannini took off from from what he noted had been a dramatic difference in recent polls between support for Monti himself and for his policies.  Regarding Monti, a recent poll by the Ipsos organization reported that 54 percent of Italians judged him favorably.  Several other polls report similar numbers, although a couple were about 10 points lower.

By contrast, when the same polling organizations asked Italians about specific measures, somewhere  between half and two-thirds of them expressed disapproval.  I was struck by this since I've generally thought well of Monti and his government and what they seemed to be trying to do.  I suppose nothing rearranges preconceptions like getting closer to the subject.

Giannini thinks those critics of the "Monti Agenda" in the polls are justified (although I suspect their reasons might not be quite as well worked out as his).  Generally, he thinks the government's measures on things like pensions, anti-corruption, labor market flexibility, and several others, haven't gone far enough and too often may end up increasing the burden on those who can least bear it.

He does allow that some of this is not Monti's fault, at least not directly.  Despite  general support from the parties, on specific issues he has had to negotiate and assuage their objections to proposals details.  Also, Giannini finds some of Monti's ministers have not been the most adept, thereby complicating passage of the government's measures.  And along with this, he things that high-level professional administrators have not always been as creative with new policy ideas as the economic crisis would seem to require.

So what does this split in evaluating Monti on the one hand and his agenda on the other mean for Italian politics over the next few months as political leaders position themselves for next Spring's anticipated elections?  Honestly, I'm not sure I know yet.  It's one more thing I'll be following.

Update: Yesterday, I said that I didn't know what this divide in opinions might mean for current political maneuvering.  Today, I'd add the following: It may continue support for the idea the idea of a “Monti bis.”  Monti remains valuable for the credibility he would bring to any successor government.  At the same time, it probably gives the parties room to criticize his record and make their own proposals.  In a democratic election that’s not a bad thing.  The test will be, though, how the next government treats this government’s reforms.
Will they be extended or curtailed?

Meanwhile, Italians still believe in political posters:

  

  

Wash Day

This photography stuff gets to be a lot of work.  I found myself thinking something like this yesterday while we were visiting Assisi.  I found myself thinking that I wasn't seeing anything new, anything I hadn't seen earlier in the week.  Old stone buildings, narrow streets, shadows and light in churches and arcades; they seemed to be the same in Assisi as they were elsewhere.  So I looked for something else and ended up finding laundry.  Thursday became my wash day.  Also, I think that sometimes I may prefer visiting a place to absorb the history and art, just taking photos "for the record."  Walking around, concentrating only on making images, when there is so much in the streets and buildings that I'm ignoring, bothered me.  As our guide through the Basilica said, often the best camera is our eyes and brain, except, of course, that mine don't store images as well as iPhoto does.  Here are a few things from "wash day."

A note from Cannara

Since last Saturday, Lynda and I have been in Cannara, Umbria, as part of a week-long photography workshop.  A couple, professional photographers who live near us in Northwest Washington D.C. -- Frank von Riper and Judith Goodman -- are leading the group, which includes just six of us.  We're staying in a very nicely modernized old farm house, the "Fattoria del Gelso," which I'm guessing may have been the home for tenant farm families until sometime in the 1950s or 1960s.  Since Sunday, our van driver, a remarkable American woman whose driving is the least of her talents, has been taking us to picturesque -- literally -- towns nearby -- Bevagna, Montefalco, and today, Orvieto.  So far, our visits have incluced a few hours of taking pictures and nearly as much time around the table.  Both have been challenging.  I'll try to say more later about the workshop, but for the moment here are some examples of what I've been seeing.

Mount Subasio and the agricultural valley around Cannara

Fattoria del Gelso ("Mulberry Farmhouse") on the right at the end of the line of trees

 

A convertsation in Bevagna (near Cannara)

Antipasti in Montefalco

Lunch in Bevagna

A Montefalco wall