RESURRECT DEAD ON PLANET JUPiTER

North / South and Walker Evans

Just to kick things off on a pretentious note, a passage from Alexis de Tocqueville’s sprawling observation of our infant republic, Democracy in America has stood out in my mind since I read it many (5) years ago. In the passage Toqueville traveled by boat down the Mississippi River.

To one side was the Northern territory and to the other, the slave South. On the Northern side he saw the Jeffersonian ideal. The well-cultivated land was filled with neat and tidy small farms. Industrious workers carved out a very decent living, working independently, but in a larger sense working together to build a stable and progressive economy. There was no aristocracy or extreme poverty. The vision was almost utopian.

On the southern bank, he saw enormous farms being worked by slave labor. Land (and human) owners were wealthier, but far more rare. Owners were less capable and generally less resourceful. Landowners hadn’t developed the skills to make for themselves. Instead they learned the talents they needed to manage a workforce of slaves or indentured servants who made for them. In the south, Tocqueville saw the birth of an aristocracy ruling over a poor or enslaved majority through violence, fear and oppression.

It’s a powerful agent for thought and possibly for a call for change when economic disparity grows so extreme that it creates a clear visual contrast. Take a look at Lancaster Avenue as you leave the city. If you blink, you might think you just passed through a hole in the space-time continuum and ended up miles from where you just were.

But back to the North/South thing and on to the photography of Walker Evans.

The other day I was enjoying a very old pastime of mine, sitting in Borders browsing through the photography section. I took a new Walker Evans book down and settled into the corner by the window. In the same aisle, 2 very normal looking teenage girls searched through Magik texts in preparation for casting some spell later on that night. Eventually a third girl returned from Harry’s Occult and Spiritual Supply Shop with the final element and they were off. In the next aisle over an older man preached his bizarre brand of Christianity to a young man/old boy. I made myself comfortable and looked through the book. This is the new thing that I saw in the presentation of the images this author/editor selected.

There’s not really much sense in explaining what I want to present visually, except to keep in mind that North/South divide. Walker Evans made both these photos. Both factories are steel mills. The top is a tremendously famous shot taken in 1935 in Bethlehem, PA. The second is a less famous shot. In it, Evans pays homage to his own work. It was taken in Alabama in 1936.

———-