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Boarding House Porch, Birmingham, Alabama
Boarding House Porch, Birmingham, Alabama
Boarding House Porch, Birmingham, Alabama

Boarding House Porch, Birmingham, Alabama

Artist (American, 1903 - 1975)
Date1936 (printed 1971)
Mediumgelatin silver print
DimensionsImage: 7 1/4 × 9 1/4 in. (18.4 × 23.5 cm)
Support: 8 3/8 × 10 in. (21.3 × 25.4 cm)
Mat: 17 5/8 × 14 5/8 in. (44.8 × 37.1 cm)
Frame: 19 1/2 × 16 1/2 × 3/4 in. (49.5 × 41.9 × 1.9 cm)
ClassificationsPhotograph
Credit LineGift of the Ives Family in memory of Norman S. and Constance T. Ives, 2016
Object number2016.21.8
DescriptionWooden steps and front porch of a multi-story building with carved columns and ornamented supports. Two men seated at left of front door. Several chairs, a flower pot, two wooden crates, and a paint can or pail on porch. Sign reading “Furnished Rooms” and street address “2446” at right of door. Two tall rectangular windows at right of structure with smaller window in second story above that has clothing hanging out of it.
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. Evans made some of his most enduring images of architecture and signage in and around Birmingham, Alabama, in the mid-1930s and also trained his camera on the structures and working conditions that were part of that region’s booming steel industry.
The J. Paul Getty Museum owns another print of this image, see Judith Keller, “Walker Evans: The J. Paul Getty Museum Collection,” 1995, p. 160-161.

 

Walker Evans visited Louisiana and the Gulf Coast in 1935 and 1935 as a photographer for the U.S. government’s Farm Security Adminstration. Evans made some of his most enduring images of architecture and signage in and around Birmingham, Alabama, in the mid-1930s and also trained his camera on the structures and working conditions that were part of that region’s booming steel industry.

 

For other images Walker Evans made in the area around Birmingham, see “”Fish Market near Birmingham, Alabama” (2006.22.4) and “Bessemer, Alabama” (2016.x.x) from this same portfolio and donor.

 

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.

On View
Not on view
Boarding House Porch, Birmingham, Alabama
Walker Evans
1936 (printed 1971)
My Front Porch, El Valle
Alex Harris
March 1952
Old Munich
Gustave Baumann
1905
Rain (sketch)
Gustave Baumann
before 1938
Untitled
Gustave Baumann
1906 - 1916
The Door Yards
Gustave Baumann
1906 - 1916
Pie Town, NM
Russell Lee
1940 (printed 1990)
Tome, NM
Doug Keats
1984
Real Indians
Larry McNeil
1977 (printed 2007)