Friday, February 6, 2009

And in this shoebox....

...is a collection of postcards I accumulated in 1976.

And what compelled me to take another look at them?

An article in today's New York Times, "Main Street Postcards as Muse".

Excerpt:
[Walker] Evans is foremost a giant of 20th-century photography, the instigator of a lean, elegant documentary style that was as unvarnished as it was ennobling. He immortalized gaunt sharecroppers, dilapidated plantations and bone-dry country stores in the South; worker housing and grimy factories in the industrial North; and (with a hidden camera) the unguarded expressions of New York subway riders.

But before he was anything else, Evans was an obsessed collector of postcards. This exhibition reveals them as the through line, the wellspring of his art.

How about that? My own fascination with Main Street puts me in great company.

First group: small city main streets
Greeneville, Tennessee
Charlottesville, Virginia
Great Barrington, Massachusetts



Second group: Business district aerial views
Salt Lake City, Minneapolis, Wilmington (Delaware)


Business districts at night: Amarillo, Las Vegas, Los Angeles

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