{
"data": {
"id": 153624,
"accession_number": "1987.152",
"share_license_status": "Copyrighted",
"tombstone": "Subway Portrait, 1938\u201341. Walker Evans (American, 1903\u20131975). Vintage gelatin silver print; image: 12.3 x 18.2 cm (4 13/16 x 7 3/16 in.); matted: 35.6 x 45.7 cm (14 x 18 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift in memory of Laura Burgess, 1987.152. \u00a9 Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art",
"current_location": null,
"title": "Subway Portrait",
"creation_date": "1938\u201341",
"creation_date_earliest": 1938,
"creation_date_latest": 1941,
"artists_tags": [
"male"
],
"culture": [
"America"
],
"technique": "Vintage gelatin silver print",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "Photography",
"collection": "PH - American 1900-1950",
"type": "Photograph",
"measurements": "Image: 12.3 x 18.2 cm (4 13/16 x 7 3/16 in.); Matted: 35.6 x 45.7 cm (14 x 18 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"image": {
"height": 0.123,
"height_inch": 4,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.8125,
"width": 0.182,
"width_inch": 7,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.1875
},
"matted": {
"height": 0.356,
"height_inch": 14,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.0,
"width": 0.457,
"width_inch": 18,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.0
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": "\u00a9 Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art",
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "Written in pencil on verso: \"WE v.132.y\"",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 310231,
"title": "The Year in Review for 1987",
"description": "The Year in Review for 1987. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 24-April 17, 1988).",
"opening_date": "1988-02-24T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 194095,
"title": "Icons of American Photography: A Century of Photographs from the Cleveland Museum of Art",
"description": "Icons of American Photography: A Century of Photographs from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 24-September 16, 2007); Frick Art and Historical Center, Pittsburgh, PA (October 3, 2009-January 3, 2010).",
"opening_date": "2007-06-24T00:00:00"
},
{
"id": 299125,
"title": "From Riches to Rags: American Photography in the Depression",
"description": "From Riches to Rags: American Photography in the Depression. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (August 13-December 31, 2017).",
"opening_date": "2017-08-13T04:00:00"
},
{
"id": 393871,
"title": "A New York Minute: Street Photography, 1920\u20131950",
"description": "A New York Minute: Street Photography, 1920\u20131950. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (July 11-November 7, 2021).",
"opening_date": "2021-07-10T04:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": []
},
"provenance": [],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": null,
"description": "For four years, Walker Evans secretly photographed passengers on New York City subways with a camera hidden in his jacket. Since he could not look through the viewfinder and the subjects did not know they were being photographed, these images are neutral portraits without preening or prejudice, experiments in chance and intuition. \u201cThe guard is down and the mask is off. . . . People\u2019s faces are in naked repose down in the subway,\u201d Evans wrote. \u201cYou don\u2019t see among them the face of a judge or a senator or a bank president. What you do see is at once sobering, startling, and obvious: these are the ladies and gentlemen of the jury.\u201d",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q79939604"
],
"internet_archive": []
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Turner, Evan H. \"The Year in Review for 1987.\" The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 75, no. 2 (1988): 30-71.",
"page_number": "p. 66, no. 56",
"url": "www.jstor.org/stable/25160017"
},
{
"citation": "Cleveland Museum of Art, Tom E Hinson. Catalogue of Photography. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1996.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: P. 150",
"url": ""
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/1987.152",
"images": {},
"alternate_images": [],
"creditline": "Gift in memory of Laura Burgess",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": null,
"athena_id": 153624,
"creators": [
{
"id": 122,
"description": "Walker Evans (American, 1903\u20131975)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": null,
"role": "artist",
"biography": "Walker Evans American, 1903-1975\r\n\r\nGreatly admired for his photographs of America during the Great Depression, Walker Evans (born in St. Louis) originally wanted to be a writer. He studied literature and languages at Phillips Academy in Massachusetts, then spent one year at Williams College. In 1926 he traveled to Paris, where he audited courses at the Sorbonne before moving to New York City in 1927. Over the next two years Evans developed a strong interest in photography, taking numerous pictures of New York. The unusual viewpoints and sharp angles of this early work reveal his awareness of contemporary European photography. Also influential was the work of Eug\u00e8ne Atget and Paul Strand, whose strong, direct style Evans admired.\r\n\tIn 1931 Evans undertook his first major photographic project in collaboration with Lincoln Kirstein: a series of photographs of New England architecture for a proposed book by architectural historian John Brooks Wheelwright. A selection of these photographs was later exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1933). From 1935 to early 1937, Evans worked for the Resettlement Administration (later known as the Farm Security Administration), documenting the effects of the depression. He spent most of his time traveling through the South, taking photographs in the clear, straightforward manner for which he became famous. His subjects ranged from rural farmers and miners to roadside architecture and main streets. In 1936 Evans took three weeks' leave from the fsa to work with writer James Agee on an illustrated article on tenant farm families for Fortune magazine. This collaborative project later appeared in book form as Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941).\r\n\tIn 1938 the Museum of Modern Art organized a major traveling exhibition of Evans's pictures, accompanied by the book American Photographs. Two years later Evans received the first of three fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (1940, 1941, 1959). From 1943-45 he worked as a writer for Time magazine and from 1945-65 was on the staff of Fortune, producing numerous portfolios and photographic essays. Evans then moved to New Haven, Connecticut, to join the faculty of Yale University as professor of photography/graphic design; in 1974 he was named professor emeritus. M.M.",
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1903",
"death_year": "1975",
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 1
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "1987-11-18T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1938,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "1938\u201341",
"collapse_artists": false,
"on_loan": false,
"recently_acquired": false,
"record_type": "object",
"conservation_statement": null,
"has_conservation_images": false,
"cover_accession_number": null,
"is_nazi_era_provenance": false,
"impression": null,
"alternate_titles": [],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-05-01 06:51:23.591000"
}
}