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Roadside Sign, Louisiana (from the portfolio Walker Evans: 14 Photographs)
Roadside Sign, Louisiana (from the portfolio Walker Evans: 14 Photographs)
Roadside Sign, Louisiana (from the portfolio Walker Evans: 14 Photographs)

Roadside Sign, Louisiana (from the portfolio Walker Evans: 14 Photographs)

Artist (American, 1903 - 1975)
Date1936 (printed 1971)
Mediumgelatin silver print
DimensionsImage: 7 1/4 × 9 1/8 in. (18.4 × 23.2 cm)
Support: 8 1/8 × 9 1/2 in. (20.6 × 24.1 cm)
Frame: 19 5/8 × 16 1/2 in. (49.8 × 41.9 cm)
Mat: 17 3/4 × 14 1/2 in. (45.1 × 36.8 cm)
ClassificationsPhotograph
Credit LineGift of the Ives Family in memory of Norman S. and Constance T. Ives, 2016
Object number2016.21.2
DescriptionHorizontal sign with a dark background and the words “DRY CLEANING” written in capital letters at the bottom edge. Above it is a fancy framing device around a buttoned suit jacket, shirt, striped necktie, and pocket square displayed on a stand, flanked by saplings on both sides.
Text Entries

Walker Evans visited Louisiana and the Gulf Coast in 1935 and 1935 as a photographer for the U.S. government’s Farm Security Adminstration. In addition to photographing social conditions in the South, Evans pursued his personal interest in the architecture and folkways of the region. This dry cleaning sign in Baton Rouge, with its distinctive juxtaposition of a suit on a stand with two trees, caught his eye and became part of the artist’s extensive photographic catalog of American signage.

After giving a lecture at Yale University in 1964, Evans began teaching there the following year as a professor of graphic design. He found a dynamic group of colleagues including Herbert Matter and Norman Seaton Ives. Ives worked with Evans to create a portfolio of his photographs issued in 1971, of which this photograph was a part (see object file for detailed publishing information and list of photographs included, all shot in the 1930s.

The Museum of Modern Art in New York owns a print of this image and lists its title as “Outdoor Advertising Sign near Baton Rouge, Louisiana” with a negative date of 1935. The list of plates for the portfolio from which the New Mexico Museum of Art’s print was taken lists the title as “Roadside Sign, Louisiana” with a negative date of 1936.

For another image from Louisiana by Walker Evans, see “Sidewalk and Shop Front, New Orleans,” (2006.22.3) from the same portfolio and donor.

 

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