WALKER EVANS
Photographer’s Window Display, Birmingham, Alabama 1936
library of congress, washington, d.c.
hands: jan grenci, 7.8.92

Sometimes Walker Evans would cut up his negatives to indicate the cropping he intended. Other times he did so simply to fit part of an 8 x 10 inch negative into his 5 x 7 inch enlarger.

“Stieglitz wouldn’t cut a quarter-inch off a frame,” he said. “I would cut any inches off my frames in order to get a better picture.”

Evans sliced up two of his 8 x 10 inch negatives of a photographer’s display window, but a third lies uncut in Washington, D.C. All were taken for the Farm Security Administration. Evans said he took the pictures in Savannah, Georgia. The government is sure he took them in Birmingham, Alabama.

In 1938 Evans used the photograph as the second picture in his landmark book, American Photographs. For $25 the Library of Congress still sells a print of it to anyone who asks for one.