Walker Evans in the De Luze cottage
Walker Evans visited Truro, Massachusetts, in 1930 and stayed in the home of a family named De Luze, rented by his friend Ben Shahn. In the cottage of this Portuguese fishing family, his mature vision really began to take shape.
Had a wonderful dream last night. Where in hell do all those details come from. Really, literature, all the greatest descriptions I know are so much watery smudge to the least of my dreams. I suppose the best about dreams is the abolition of time. After one like last night’s I spend the day tasting the tail ends of lovely unearthly moods without a headache. I think my powers lie mostly there, in dreams.
Walker Evans, Letter to Hanns Skolle, May 13, 1930
Evans’ photographs of the De Luze cottage mark a profound turning point in his career, not because they were particularly successful, but because they show Evans’ deepening dream detail. Though interest in the mundane is common among modernists, it’s the complexity of detail that sets Evans apart. These photographs are a bridge between densely formalist experiments, and later photographs which show both this richness of detail, and the compositional complexity of Evans’ early work. Life is found in details.
More of my Walker Evans wandering, in case you’ve missed it, includes: An introduction, Evans’ Placard for a Museum Wall, Evan’s photographs for Hart Crane’s The Bridge, his early European snapshots, photographs of Coney Island, his affinity with Atget, cityscapes, a short story he wrote called Brooms, his habit of making lists, and the most recent addition, cityscapes and lists revisited.
