Untitled (Dead End)
Artist
Walker Evans
(American, 1903 - 1975)
Date1974
Mediuminternal dye diffusion transfer print (Polaroid SX-70)
DimensionsImage: 3 1/16 × 3 1/8 in. (7.8 × 7.9 cm)
Support: 4 1/4 × 3 1/2 in. (10.8 × 8.9 cm)
Support: 4 1/4 × 3 1/2 in. (10.8 × 8.9 cm)
ClassificationsPhotograph
Credit LineGift of Mr. and Mrs. Ezra Hubbard, 2016
Object number2016.19.1
DescriptionLight-colored background with suggestions of peach or rust-colored paint underneath. At center in black painted capital letters are the words: DEAD/END. Holes in the sign are visible at the beginning and end of the word “DEAD”.Text Entries
Best
known for his influential black-and-white photographs of mid-century American
vernacular architecture and signage – as well as the powerful photographs he
made in the southern U.S. during his short stint with the Farm Security
Administration – Evans began making color pictures with the Polaroid SX-70
camera in 1972 and used it for two years, creating more than 2,400 images. His
lifelong love of text, signs, home-made objects, and things that bear evidence
of time or heavy use are evident in this piece.
This is a unique Polaroid print
but Evans made more than one photograph of this sign. Another is in the print
of the J. Paul Getty Museum (accession number 93.XM15.2) in which the orange
paint under the white surface is more visible and only one hole is seen (to the
right of the word “DEAD”). A print
similar to the one in the Getty collection is in the collection of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York holds the copyright for Walker Evans’ work.
On View
Not on view