"Carol Kalker, Greenwich, Connecticut"

gelatin silver print on baryta

artist stamp on verso

 „... the camera takes on the character and the personality of the handler. The mind works on the machine. "1 Walker Evans

The print shows the portrait of a young woman in profile, her upper part of the body wrapped in a blanket. Her head leans towards her left shoulder, her gaze is slightly lowered and falls to the side. She wears chin-length frizzy open hair. In the background one can see a shadowy water body lined with trees and in the foreground leaves of a bush. The original motif in this print is slightly cropped so that the portrait does not lose itself in the background and the focus is on the facial expression and the structure of the blanket around her upper body.
Carol Kalker remains an unknown to the viewer. But a glance at the inventory of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET), which has been administering Walker Evans' estate since 1994, shows that he photographed Carol Kalker several times in Greenwich Village in June 1929. The different photographs, probably taken within one day, clearly refer to Evans' later working method, in which he often produced several versions of one motif and thus captured his complex view of the world, the perception of his environment on several levels, through different compositions and settings.
An important foundation for his development was laid during his time in Europe. Like many young art enthusiasts, he was drawn to Paris in 1926, where he spent 13 months of his life. He studied literary writings by e.g. Baudelaire, Flaubert and Proust at the Sorbonne and also wrote many short texts of his own. This phase of his life should remain of great importance for his later artistic life. The confrontation with literature provided Evans with extensive knowledge from whose treasure he drew for a long time and which strongly influenced his photographs.
The camera was already his constant companion at this early time. He always carried an Eastman Kodak 35mm camera in his waistcoat pocket. His realisation that photography as a means of artistic expression suited him better led him to abandon writing in 1928 and devote himself entirely to photography. He found a way to recognise lyrical correspondences between words and images and to use his talent for the visual in photography.2
The numerous photographs he took in his early years between 1928-29 remained unknown for a long time, but they unmistakably show his artistic ambition. Shortly after his return from Paris in May 1927, Evans, inspired by European vision and technique, began to take serious photographs.3

Evans' approach was guided more by his temperament and habits than by reflection and conscious choice.4 Thus his photographs are determined by the known and the unknown, by experience and knowledge - basically by Evans' unconscious thought processes. No two photographs are alike and each one reflects an aspect of Evan's range of interests. This can be well observed in the further sequences of the portrait from the inventory of the MET, in which Carol Kalker stood in different poses and clothing for Walker Evans model. A still-preserved negative (1994.251.911) shows her in a similar composition with a larger image detail in profile from the left. In another (1994.251.913) we see Carol Kalker in profile dressed with a light silk shirt. Her right shoulder is covered with a scarf and her hair is tucked together at the back. The individual shots show the facets of her character, which Evans perceived and captured with his camera on this summer day. Evans was 26 years old at the time and this photo session was probably a mutual pleasure.

One can assume that the appearance of this photograph was influenced by the intensive study and extraordinary enthusiasm of the works of Eugène Atget (1857 - 1927), who in his simple photographs of great formal beauty, avoided any artistic effect.
In 1929 Evans met Lincoln Kirstein, who introduced him to Berenice Abbott. At this time Abbott owned the estate of Eugène Atget, whose photographs impressed Walker Evans and strongly influenced his forthcoming career as a photographer.

Walker Evans once said about Atget: "Take Atget, whose work I now know very well (...). In his work you do

feel what some poeple will call poetry. I do call it that also, but a better word for it, to me, is, well - when Atget does even a tree root, he transcends that thing. (...) "5 Walker Evans also ascribes to himself the talent of instinctively and unconsciously seeing and depicting the objects in front of his camera as sublime above the actual object. "Unconscious" should be underlined here, as Evans describes this as a kind of "gift" that only becomes visible in the performance of an artistic activity, such as that of a photographer or writer. From this context, Evans' great interest in literature and poetics becomes very clear - Evans' term "transcendental", for example, is found in the principles of transcendental philosophy, in which philosophy conceives of being as "representational in a world of experience". A work from 1968, showing dirt on a manhole cover (Debris on Manhole Cover, New York, 1968), gets, abstracts and removes from nature and the actual place, in a sense human qualities - transcended from what it is and placed in the context of one's own being.

The influences described here, which make up Evan's entire oeuvre, are in my opinion already visible in this early portrait in some rudimentary form. The portrait by Carol Kalker is very well reflected in the description of Atget's photographs and the feeling of the "transcendent". It radiates an unbelievable calmness and depth and shows without any artistic effects the essence of this young woman. The small format of the print reflects the intimacy one imagines between the photographer and the person portrayed during the shooting.6

"Photography is not about taking pictures. It is about having a view. "7

It takes time and rest, but, if one allows oneself to do so, the "gaze" that Evans speaks of passes over to the viewer and unfolds in its entirety in the intense engagement with the image.

Walker Evans, born in 1903 in St. Louis, Missouri (*1975 New Haven, Connecticut), is today one of the most influential documentary photographers of the 20th century. He is best known for his photographs for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) in 1935-37 and for Fortune Magazine together with the writer James Agee (Let us Now Praise the Famous Men, 1941).

1 „Interview with Walker Evans“ in: Art in Amerika, 59, March/April 1971, p. 85
2 Walker Evans. Tiefenschärfe. Prestel Verlag, 2015, p. 30
3 „Interview with Walker Evans“ in: Art in Amerika, 59, March/April 1971, p. 84
4 Walker Evans at Work, p. 10
5 „Interview with Walker Evans“ in: Art in Amerika, 59, March/April 1971, p. 85
6 This is a contact print of a 4.5 x 6 cm negative.
7 Walker Evans zitiert nach: „The Art of Seeing“, in: The New Yorker, 24. December 1966, p. 27