The Gesture: Walker Evans' Businessmen

The gesture in portraiture can be subtle or more obvious. In a commercial or editorial setting, for example, subtlety may not necessarily be prized. The viewer is led, like a horse to water, to the required reading (whether she drinks is another matter).

During Walker Evans' 20 years (1945-65) as staff photographer at Fortune, he produced some remarkable work whose artistic value often transcended his initial briefs. (For a great online catalogue of this work, take a look here).

These portraits of businessmen, made in 1952 in lovely large-format colour, are more in compliance with the accepted conventions of editorial portraiture. In keeping with his previous work, however, they show a master photographer finely attuned to the importance of the gesture in the making of meaning.

Walker Evans, Towe of American Cynamid, Fortune, June 1952

Walker Evans, subject unknown, Fortune, December 1952

Walker Evans, Cisler of Detroit Edison, Fortune, March 1952

Walker Evans, South Pacific's Russell, Fortune, April 1952

Walker Evans, subject unknown, Fortune, September 1952

Interestingly, Evans had strong views on portraiture which suggest that he probably would not have enjoyed making these kinds of pictures. In a wide-ranging interview given in 1971, he spells this out:

PAUL CUMMINGS: You’re not really interested in photographing people in the way you are buildings or something, are you? Even in a Chicago street group it seems more of a pattern than –

WALKER EVANS: Well, I’m not interested in people in the portrait sense, in the individual sense. I’m interested in people as part of the pictures and as themselves but anonymous. I really disapprove of photographing celebrities or known beauties. I do it every once in a while but I think it’s – I can’t quite put my finger on it but I don’t feel right doing that.

He also has a tremendously entertaining dig at Yousuf Karsh and Henri Cartier-Bresson in the next breath. Check out the interview if you want to get a sense of the man as myth, late in his life.