Walker Evans’s Subway Portraits

Seeing Walker Evans’s photos of the subways during the depression share similarities with today’s train riders is almost uncanny; seeing as both times had nothing for the rider to do except read the newspaper or a book. In both eras, the people still share the same emotionless stare and the occasional lost look. Many of these people were either on their way to work or coming home from work. Evans definitely captures the essence of riding the subway since there is not much you can do when riding a train. I think his secretive approach to photographing the riders was well planned since the viewer can see how real it looks. None of those riders had a clue that they were being photographed