New Art! Walker Evans | Things Organized Neatly, Circa 1936

We’ve released more than 1,000 editions since our inception, and yet somehow we continue to get awfully amped up with every new release. There are few occasions more innervating than those where we’re adding a straight-up legend like Walker Evans into the mix. In other words: today’s edition—General Store Interior, Moundville, Alabama—is an especially special edition. 

Our Vintage Editions started out as an experiment, but they’ve become central to the what-we-do-and-why of 20x200. You've warmed our hearts with your love of the classics. It’s an honor to be able to share photographs from the FSA era by legends like Berenice Abbott, Dorothea Lange, and Arthur Siegel. It’s also impossible to properly illuminate that era in particular and the history of photography in general without the inclusion of the legendary Walker Evans.

General Store Interior, Moundville, Alabama is fixed in time by the calendar that dominates the upper right of the frame. July 1936 is definitely a very distant past as we look at this image today, but there’s a certain Things Organized Neatly contemporary appeal to the efficiently (not to mention abundantly) packed shelves of this General Store. Many a Brooklyn outpost these days seeks to recreate this sort of wholesome, Made-in-the-USA vibe and judging by the commentary spotted about this image across the interwebs, there are plenty of people who’d love to get their hands on some of the items on display.

It’s easy to understand why as you hone in on the details. Classic kerosene lamps are displayed with military precision. O.K.-brand soap boxes presage the pop-art cool of the Brillo stacks which made Warhol a superstar several decades later. Everywhere the eye turns there’s deftly executed typography that still has evidence of a human touch intact. Linger longer, and you’ll notice disorder and decay encroaching upon this virtuous tableau. One flour bag leans askew. Left of center, papers erupt from a drawer and cascade diagonally across the floor. The tower of cups are anything but straight. There’s a story to be told in this photo about Moundville, Alabama; thanks to the deft talents of Evans, it unfolds with nary a word spoken.