the image i like of Walker Evans is him driving around the countryside in the southern states of the US, on assignment for the Farm Security Administration in the 1930's. It was never really defined what he was meant to be doing, but what it did do was enable him the freedom to chronicle a form of unofficial decorative art that grew out of a country on its knees.
so in between photographing things like old plantation mansions and deserted agricultural land, he focused on pictures of signs, billboards and storefronts. he passed through hundreds of towns - and the material for his art just presented itself. his photos have sometimes been called "artless", but how he taps into what is directly in front of him is the art, and the ordinary becomes dreamlike - because of his choice to take the picture.
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