Legendary American photgrapher Walker Evans (1903-1975) is best known for his captivating large format images of the American vernacular. His iconic images entered the public's collective consciousness with appearances in magazines, books, and museums around the world since the 1930s. He has inspired generations of photographers and artists, changing the field with his narratives of American life. In 1938, MOMA exhibited the first decade of his photographs in his first retrospective American Photographs.

Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Walker Evans moved to New York City as a young man to pursue writing. He studied writing at Williams College for a year, and later the Sorbonne, picking up photography in 1928. The interplay between language and image were central to his work. As a small child and throughout his life, Evans collected picture postcards. A 2009 exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Walker Evans and the Picture Postcard, featured his 9,000 postcard collection to reveal the symbiotic relationship with his own photographs.