Walker Evan’s Subway Portraits

I feel like Evan’s idea to secretly take pictures of subway passengers was great. Taking photos of people when they are not noticing and not acting nor posing for the shot makes the photo more real. He got to capture a real moment of the riders zoned out and captured their thoughtful  facial expressions. Looking at the photos in Visualingual’s blog I see many similarities between the riders from the depression era and today’s riders. 99 percent of the time you ride the subway today you will always see a few people zoned out thinking about something, talking to a friend, sleeping, or they will just have a depressed\serious look on their face; just like in Evan’s portraits. People were stressed back then because of their financial struggles and you can see it through their facial expressions, just like you see it today. Many people are just tired and stressed from work and when they are on the subway they just think about everything, it’s like the subway ride home or to work is their alone time. If someone was to secretly go and take pictures of random people on the subway today and publish them in an article, they will look very similar to Evan’s portraits just with better detail.