Chicago 1946

Walker Evans made this photograph, simply entitled Chicago, at an unknown date. The image freezes a moment in the life of a racially diverse group of people on a city street. Evans is known for his work documenting the effects of the Great Depression. He worked for the Farm Security Administration, a New Deal agency, and the images that he created were tools used by the federal government to intervene in the lives of the poor. Yet, his photographs are often seen as objective records of a particular time, and this idea raises important questions about the role of the photographer in shaping a viewer's understanding. How do we know that Evans' photographs are really objective? What choices were made in the making of this image? And how do those choices reflect the values and beliefs of the photographer, the government, and the cultural institutions that supported his work? Looking more closely at historical sources such as Evans' journals, letters, and other photographs, we can better understand the complex social forces at play in the making of this picture.