Artist
Walker Evans (American, 1903–1975)American, 1903–1975
CultureAmerican
Titles
- Citizen in Downtown Havana
Date1933
PlaceHavana, Cuba
MediumGelatin silver print
DimensionsImage: 9 3/8 × 5 1/8 in. (23.8 × 13 cm)
Sheet: 9 15/16 × 8 1/16 in. (25.2 × 20.4 cm)
Sheet: 9 15/16 × 8 1/16 in. (25.2 × 20.4 cm)
Credit LineMuseum purchase funded by Mrs. Efrem Kurtz in memory of Joseph Archer
Object number82.39
Not on view
Explore Further
Department
PhotographyObject Type
1933, Walker Evans traveled to Cuba to make photographs for Carleton Beals’s
book The Crime of Cuba. The
photographer and the journalist shared the goal of exposing the corruption
rampant in Cuba during Gerardo Machado’s dictatorship. They used Evans’s images
as visual documents of the social climate there. The photograph here
was not selected for publication in the book—perhaps because the cool, tall,
well-dressed gentleman who waits in line at the newsstand did not offer the
scathing critique that Beals’s editors had sought.
Provenance[Lunn Ltd., Washington, DC]; purchased by MFAH, 1982.
Exhibition History"Public Dress," The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 19 June - 8 October, 2012.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks
verso bottom in pencil left to right "#543", "WEV 122.Y", "WE 1956 GI"
verso bottom center a stamp "Walker Evans" above two rectangular boxes inscribed in pencil "1", "48"
Cataloguing data may change with further research.
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