General Store Interior Possibly 1936 - 1981

Walker Evans made this photograph of a general store interior at an unknown date, though clues in the image suggest it was probably taken in 1936. The image is rich in visual codes and cultural references. A Coca-Cola advertisement hangs on the wall, and boxes of ‘OK Soap’ sit on the floor, telling us about the rise of consumer culture in America at the time. A July 1936 calendar hangs on the wall, and bags of fertilizer sit in the foreground. The image likely comes from the American South, the region that Evans and the writer James Agee were documenting at this time. We know that Evans was working for the Farm Security Administration, a federal agency created to combat rural poverty during the Great Depression. Evans’s photographs raise important questions about the public role of art and the politics of imagery. To understand them better, historians might look at the archives of the Farm Security Administration, or at the writings of Agee. The meaning of art is always contingent on social and institutional context.