License Photo Studio, New York

Walker Evans American
1934, printed ca. 1970
Not on view
This photograph displays Walker Evans' increasingly assured ability to construct meaning out of the juxtaposition of pictorial elements. Here they extend from the hands pointing to the doorway, to the crazy quilt of signs papered across the building's facade, to graffiti scrawled among the signs. Many of Evans' most sophisticated photographs from the period have a rebuslike quality, disclosing previously unnoticed connections in the world. Evans was drawn to the decaying quarters of New York during the Depression-especially to buildings along the waterfront and the Bowery that exhibited, like Paul Strand's blind peddler (33.43.334), a "battered nobility."

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: License Photo Studio, New York
  • Artist: Walker Evans (American, St. Louis, Missouri 1903–1975 New Haven, Connecticut)
  • Date: 1934, printed ca. 1970
  • Medium: Gelatin silver print
  • Dimensions: 18.3 x 15.2 cm (7 3/16 x 6 in.)
  • Classification: Photographs
  • Credit Line: Gift of Arnold H. Crane, 1972
  • Object Number: 1972.742.17
  • Rights and Reproduction: © Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
  • Curatorial Department: Photographs

More Artwork

Research Resources

The Met provides unparalleled resources for research and welcomes an international community of students and scholars. The Met's Open Access API is where creators and researchers can connect to the The Met collection. Open Access data and public domain images are available for unrestricted commercial and noncommercial use without permission or fee.

To request images under copyright and other restrictions, please use this Image Request form.

Feedback

We continue to research and examine historical and cultural context for objects in The Met collection. If you have comments or questions about this object record, please complete and submit this form. The Museum looks forward to receiving your comments.