The Postcard Collector Turned Photographer: Walker Evans

For those who only know Walker Evans from his crisp 1930s black and white photographs of towns, buildings factories, and sharecroppers are in for a surprise. Turns out that Evans collected postcards long before he ever snapped even one photo (“Walker Evans and the Picture Postcard” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art). He eventually collected 9,000 cards, depicting just about every topic imaginable: hotels, various jobs, street scenes, train stations, and capitol buildings. He studied all to hone his own eventual craft: photography.