Penny Picture Display, Savannah

© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Penny Picture Display, Savannah

Currently not on view

Penny Picture Display, Savannah,

1936, printed 1974

Walker Evans, 1903–1975; born St. Louis, MO; died New Haven, CT
x1978-38.7
On one of his many trips to the South in the 1930s, Evans took this picture of a portrait shop window. In this composite of nearly identical contact sheet portraits, arranged in rows, Evans appropriated someone else’s arrangement for his own artistic ends. Questioning the distinction between documentary and art photography, he enacted this work as documentation of a window display while using popular modernist motifs to imply its simultaneous aesthetic function. The lettering of the word "STUDIO," the neat use of the grid, and the collaging of photographs align the work with avant-garde art of the period.

Information

Title
Penny Picture Display, Savannah
Dates

1936, printed 1974

Maker
Walker Evans
Medium

Gelatin silver print

Dimensions

32.8 x 26.1 cm (12 15/16 x 10 1/4 in.)
mount: 50.4 x 37.2 cm. (19 13/16 x 14 5/8 in.)

Credit Line

Gift of Gerald D. Levine

Object Number
x1978-38.7
Place Depicted

North America, United States, Georgia, Savannah

Inscription

In graphite on mount, lower left of image: 6//75
Signed in graphite, below image lower right: Walker Evans

Culture
American
Type
gelatin silver prints, black-and-white photographs, photographs
Techniques
gelatin silver process, mounting
Subject
children (people by age group), figures (representations), men, studio portraits, collages, grids (layout features), portraits, women

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