Walker Evans American Photographs Audio Guide
The Walker Evans American Photographs Audio Guide is a collaboration between the PMA and Salt Institute for Documentary Studies at Maine College of Art and Design.
In summer 2021, Salt offered a graduate-level online course for students to create site-specific audio responses to the exhibition to address contemporary issues in Walker Evans’ photographs and to provide students with professional experience and learning opportunities in audio production and documentary studies. This class is taught by Samara Smith, a documentary media practitioner and educator, who creates site-specific, mobile projects in and about public space.
Grant Fuller is Lead Producer at Windmill Content in Chicago. A 2007 graduate of the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, Grant has produced audio for StoryCorps, public radio, Obama 2012 and Adonde Media, among others.
In response to Penny Picture Display, Savannah:
A complete and immersive audio tour of Walker Evans: American Photographs. Walk around the gallery and witness the photographs come alive in sound, one by one. Featuring archival audio from the 1930s and a rich tapestry of sound effects.
Siri Colom is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Worcester State University. She has a deep and abiding love for black and white photography.
In response to Negro Barber Shop Interior, Atlanta:
The photograph is one of the inside of a Black barbershop in segregated Atlanta. Two empty barbershop chairs that face the viewer and the walls are covered with old newsprint. The audio, which includes two interviews, invites the listener to consider the question of representation.
Áine Pennello is a documentary producer and journalist living in Brooklyn, New York.
Walker Evans (United States, 1903–1975) Couple at Coney Island, New York, 1928, gelatin silver print, printed circa 1969 by Charles Rodemeyer. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of the artist, 1975
In response to Couple at Coney Island:
When Walker Evans took a photo of a couple wrapped in each other's arms at Coney Island he had no idea who Harry or Harriet Gair were. This immersive audio piece brings viewers through a complex love story using the sounds of Brooklyn's amusement park, past and present.
Carolyn Fraser is a writer and curator living in Melbourne, Australia on the unceded land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. She is currently writing a book about collecting practices and the preservation of objects. She works as an exhibitions curator at the State Library Victoria.
In response to Houses and Billboards in Atlanta:
Evans’ image of posters pasted onto billboards nailed to the front porches of two wooden frame houses draws the viewer’s eye to movie star Carole Lombard’s blackened one. This audio piece considers Walker Evans’s state of mind as he made this image, then takes viewers behind the fence into Cabbagetown, the Atlanta neighbourhood dominated by the Fulton Bag and Cotton Mill, and acknowledged as the little-known birthplace of country music.
Jane Curtis is a podcast producer and radio maker for nonprofits and public media. She lives in Sydney, Australia.
Walker Evans (United States, 1903–1975), Alabama Cotton Tenant Farmer Wife, 1936, gelatin silver print, printed 2020 from a scan of a negative in the Library of Congress. Courtesy of the Library of Congress
In response to Alabama Cotton Tenant Farmer Wife:
So many people have talked and written about this iconic photo of Allie Mae Burroughs. But what would Allie Mae think? Through archive and fiction, Allie Mae reclaims her story... and shares a few secrets.
Click here for a full transcript.
[Stop 2] In response to Alabama Cotton Tenant Farmer Wife:
Walker Evans came from up North and took photos of the South in the Great Depression. His photos, and this photo of Allie Mae Burroughs in particular, became iconic depictions of Southern poverty. How do Southerners see this photo now?
Writer Elizabeth Ogden comes from people who lived a life similar to Allie Mae, as sharecroppers in Alabama.
Ali Love is a former live sound engineer turned audio editor in Tucson, Arizona.
In response to Alabama Cotton Tenant Farmer Family (Sharecropper's Family, Hale County, Alabama):
This audio piece contemplates the similarities of the life of the narrator's grandmother to the family pictured through story, song, and voicemail.
Robert Scaramuccia is an associate producer at Tablet Studios. He graduated from the Salt Institute's radio track in 2019, and now wishes there was some sort of device that could record images and sound at the same time.
In response to Wooden Church, South Carolina:
Walker Evans thought taking pictures was like hunting: “You get the picture you want, that’s a bullseye.” Follow Evans on a hunting trip through the South in 1936, and learn what it was like to scope out a shot on a large-format camera.
Suzi Pond is a digital storyteller and founder of Redbird Media Group which amplifies organizations creating positive social and environmental change through short films and podcasts. A 2008 graduate of Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, she occasionally teaches audio documentary at the Quartz Mountain Institute and Maine Media Workshops.
In response to Birmingham Steel Mill and Workers' Houses:
This Walker Evans photo was taken at United States Steel Corporation’s Ensley Works — an open-hearth steel plant operating in the Greater Birmingham area between 1888 and 1976. Oral history voices, in order of appearance: John T. Washington, George Brown, John Giattina and Clarence E. Mason. These men were employees at nearby Sloss Furnaces and their stories are located in full within the University of Alabama Oral History Collection. Listeners will also hear mention of Republic Steel, a third nearby steel company. Using archival sound, oral histories, music and film, this audio experience seeks to add texture to the complex industrial, economic and social landscape of the time.
Missed it live? Watch the Launch Event here.
Based on an exhibition originally organized by The Museum of Modern Art, New York and organized by Sarah Hermanson Meister, former Curator, with Tasha Lutek, Collection Specialist, Department of Photography, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Support provided by Art Bridges
Support provided by the Portland Museum of Art