Contax II + Sonnar 1.5/50mm - Walker Evans *

Between 1938 and 1941 Evans produced a series of portraits in the New York City subways. The camera of his choice was a Contax II with a Sonnar 1.5/5cm lens. It was strapped to his chest, with the lens peeking out between two buttons of his winter coat. Evans painted the chrome elements of the camera black to make it more inconspicuous and used a cable release hidden in his sleeve to trigger the shutter. With this setup he succeeded in accomplishing a difficult challenge in making truly unposed portraits and reached an unseen level of reality and intimacy characteristic to this remarkable series of photographs. The camera we have the pleasure to offer was displayed during several photo exhibitions in the U.S. This may be the most famous and distinctive camera used by the photographer. Included in this lot is also a book by Evans 'Many are Called' (first edition 1966, hardcover), including photographs made with this Contax II. Walker Evans (1903-1975) was an American photographer and photojournalist. He is widely acknowledged as one of the most important photographers of the twentieth century and worked primarily in the US. His enormous artistic influence has been recognized not only there, but also internationally. He is best known for his work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) documenting the effects of the Great Depression on the rural population in the Mid 1930s. The portraits of the three families Fields, Borroughs and Tingle became icons of photography history. After 1945, Evans photographed, among others, American urban landscapes and industrial buildings for magazines like Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, Architectural Forum, Life and Fortune. Because of his documentary style, he is considered the forerunner of the German photographer couple Bernd and Hilla Becher. In 1938 the MoMa organized the first exhibition for a single photographer for Walker Evans: American Photographs. Since then, many of his works are in permanent collections of museums or have been the subject of retrospectives at institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the George Eastman Museum, the Centre Pompidou, or, most notably at Museum of Modern Art, New York and at the J. Paul Getty Museum in California, USA.