List of Walker Evans Quotes

When You Say Documentary, You Have To Have A Sophisticated Ear To Receive That Word. It Should Be Documentary Style, Because Documentary Is Police Photography Of A Scene And A Murder ... That's A Real Document. You See, Art Is Really Useless, And A Document Has Use. And Therefore, Art Is Never A Document, But It Can Adopt That Style. I Do It. I'm Called A Documentary Photographer. But That Presupposes A Quite Subtle Knowledge Of This Distinction.

Science Has Rolled Its War Wagons Over The Crushed Myths Of So Many Religious Beliefs. It Has Marshaled Its Mechanics To Explain The Motions Of The Sun, Moon, And Stars. It Has Mapped The Heavens, Leaving No Place For Gods To Live.

Science Has Discovered Much. The Engineering Is Wonderful, Epicycles And All. And Yet, As We Look At This Vast, Elaborate Structure Built On Layer And Layer Of Complex Constituents, Can We Help But Be Reminded Of The Land Of Oz. Have We Found The Emerald City? Is This What We Were Searching For? Is This The Ultimate Fabric Of Reality? Is This All There Is?

It Is Easy To Imagine Fantasy As Physical And Myth As Real. We Do It Almost Every Moment. We Do This As We Dream, As We Think, And As We Cope With The World About Us. But These Worlds Of Fantasy That We Form Into The Solid Things Around Us Are The Source Of Our Discontent. They Inspire Our Search To Find Ourselves.

I Do Note That Photography, A Despised Medium To Work In, Is Full Of Empty Phonies And Worthless Commercial People. That Presents Quite A Challenge To The Man Who Can Take Delight In Being In A Very Difficult, Disdained Medium.

Nobody Should Touch A Polaroid [camera] Until He's Over Sixty

I Never Took It Upon Myself To Change The World. And Those Contemporaries Of Mine Who Were Going Around Falling For The Idea That They Were Going To Bring Down The United States Government And Make A New World Were Just Asses To Me.

I Began To Wonder - I Knew I Was An Artist Or Wanted To Be One - But I Was Wondering Whether I Really Was An Artist. I Was Doing Such Ordinary Things That I Could Feel The Difference. Most People Would Look At Those Things And Say, 'well, That's Nothing. What Did You Do That For? That's Just A Wreck Of A Car Or A Wreck Of A Man. That's Nothing. That Isn't Art.' They Don't Say That Anymore.

Privilege, If You're Very Strict, Is An Immoral And Unjust Thing To Have, But If You've Got It You Didn't Choose To Get It And You Might As Well Use It. You're Privileged To Be At Yale, But You Know You're Under An Obligation To Repay What's Been Put Into You.

Many Photographers Are Apt To Confuse Color With Noise, And To Congratulate Themselves When They Have Almost Blown You Down With Screeching Hues Alone-a Bebop Of Electric Blues, Furious Reds, And Poison Greens.

What America Needs Is A Political Revolution.

I Think There Is A Period Of Esthetic Discovery That Happens To A Man And He Can Do All Sorts Of Things At White Heat.