Walker EvansAmerican, 1903–1975Coal Stevedore, Havana
Can I see it?
Not on view at present
Where is “Coal Stevedore, Havana” now? Collection: Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago. Not on view at present. Checked September 29, 2026.
Chicago, United States
It belongs to the collection, but is not on display at present.
- Checked
- In this state since
- Source
- The museum
Details
- Accession number
- 1991.1208
In the catalog
Sources
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Image: Art Institute of Chicago — © the artist or rights holder
In the life of Walker Evans
The whole lifeMay – June 1933
An assignment in Cuba
In May and June 1933 Evans takes photographs in Cuba on assignment for Lippincott, the publisher of Carleton Beals' “The Crime of Cuba”, a “strident account” of the dictatorship of Gerardo Machado. He documents street life, the presence of police, beggars and dockworkers in rags, and other waterfront scenes; 31 of his photographs will appear in Beals' book.
June 1935
A miners' settlement and a staff post at the RA
In 1935 Evans spends two months on a fixed-term photographic campaign in West Virginia and Pennsylvania; in June he accepts a job from the U.S. Department of the Interior to photograph a government-built resettlement community of unemployed coal miners in West Virginia. He quickly parlays this temporary employment into a full-time position as an “information specialist” in the Resettlement Administration (later the Farm Security Administration) and from October 1935 on does photographic work for it, primarily in the Southern United States.
summer 1936
Hale County with James Agee, on assignment for Fortune
In the summer of 1936, while on leave from the FSA, Evans and the writer James Agee are sent by Fortune to Hale County, Alabama, for a story the magazine subsequently opts not to run.
1938
“Walker Evans: American Photographs” at MoMA
The Museum of Modern Art in New York holds “Walker Evans: American Photographs”, the museum's first exhibition devoted to the work of a single photographer; the catalogue includes an essay by Lincoln Kirstein, whom Evans befriended in his early days in New York.
1941
“Let Us Now Praise Famous Men” is published
Evans's photographs and Agee's text detailing the duo's stay with three white tenant families in southern Alabama during the Great Depression are published as the groundbreaking book “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men”. Its detailed account of three farming families paints a deeply moving portrait of rural poverty.
1965
Professor of photography at the Yale School of Art
In 1965 Evans becomes a professor of photography on the faculty for graphic design at the Yale University School of Art.
