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Joe’s Auto Graveyard, Pennsylvania
Joe’s Auto Graveyard, Pennsylvania
Joe’s Auto Graveyard, Pennsylvania

Joe’s Auto Graveyard, Pennsylvania

Artist (American, 1903 - 1975)
Date1935 (printed 1971)
Mediumgelatin silver print
DimensionsImage: 4 1/2 × 6 1/2 in. (11.4 × 16.5 cm)
Support: 17 1/2 × 14 3/8 in. (44.5 × 36.5 cm)
Frame: 19 1/2 × 16 3/8 × 3/4 in. (49.5 × 41.6 × 1.9 cm)
ClassificationsPhotograph
Credit LineGift of the Ives Family in memory of Norman S. and Constance T. Ives, 2016
Object number2016.21.6
DescriptionForeground includes grass and soil, behind which are numerous junked cars. Middle ground to background is an empty field with a row of trees at the back and a strip of sky above.
Text Entries
Walker Evans made a series of photographs in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and its envirions in 1935, largely focusing on the steel industry and worker housing and producing iconic images including “American Legionnarie,” “Window Display, Bethlehem,” and especially “Graveyard, Houses, and Steel Mill, Bethlehem.” He also photographed in the nearby steel town of Easton. “Joe’s Auto Graveyard” appears to have been located between the two towns. Evans may have been attracted to the jumble of cars or have been making a comment on the rapidly accumulating detritus of the Industrial Revolution.
The J. Paul Getty Museum has another print of this image, see Judith Keller, “Walker Evans: The J. Paul Getty Museum Collection,” 1995, p. 145-146.

 

Walker Evans made a series of photographs in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and its envirions in 1935, largely focusing on the steel industry and worker housing and producing iconic images including “American Legionnarie,” “Window Display, Bethlehem,” and especially “Graveyard, Houses, and Steel Mill, Bethlehem.” He also photographed in the nearby steel town of Easton. “Joe’s Auto Graveyard” appears to have been located between the two towns and is sometimes listed as being “near Bethlehem” or in the “vicininity of Easton.” In the list of plates for the portfolio of which this print is a part it is listed as “’Joe’s Auto Graveyars,’ near Bethlehem, Pa.” with a date of 1936. Several variant images and/or croppings of this image exist, one showing railroad tracks in the foreground.

 

For other images Walker Evans took in steel towns, see “Bessemer, Alabama” and “Boarding House Porch, Birmingham, Alabama, both 1936, from the same portfolio and donated by the same donor (2016.x.x)

 

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).
On View
Not on view
Bessemer, Alabama
Walker Evans
1936 (printed 1971)
Bessemer, Alabama
Walker Evans
1936 (printed 1971)
Untitled  (Stop Sign)
Walker Evans
1974
Untitled  (Tombstone and flag)
Walker Evans
Sept. 27, 1974
Untitled  (Pestfree sign)
Walker Evans
1972-1974
Untitled  (SA sign)
Walker Evans
1972-1974
Untitled  (A sign #1)
Walker Evans
1972-1974
Untitled  (A sign #2)
Walker Evans
1972-1974
Untitled  (L sign)
Walker Evans
1972-1974