Welcome to the Deep Dive. Our mission here is,
well, it's pretty simple. We take a monumental
figure, we stack up all the sources we can find,
and we try to pull out the most essential insights
and, you know, the most surprising stories. And
today, the figure is Walker Evans. We're talking
1903 to 1975. An artist whose work really, it
didn't just document American history. No, it
almost feels like it wrote the visual history
of 20th century America. That's a great way to
put it. I mean, it's hard to overstate his importance.
Our sources, and we're talking about major texts
from places like the Museum of Modern Art, they
position him as one of the most influential artists
of the 20th century. That's a huge claim. It
is. It's a massive institutional endorsement,
and it's something we're going to really dig
into by looking at his whole career. Right, because
our sources cut her everything. We've got his
affluent childhood, his early dreams of being
a writer. All the way through to his just incredible
work during the Great Depression, his book collaborations,
which were, you know, groundbreaking, but also
really controversial. And then his later life
as a big time magazine editor and even a professor
at Yale. We really have the full complex arc.
And we should start with his own mission. Right
at the heart of this whole thing is Evans' own
goal as a photographer. He said his work had
to be literate, authoritative, transcendent.
Okay, that's a fascinating trio of words, literate.
When a photographer says he wants his pictures
to be literate, what does that even mean? He's
not just taking snapshots. No, not at all. For
Evans, literate meant bringing a kind of intellectual
rigor. to the photo, the kind of structure and
precision you'd find in literature. He wanted
you to read the images, not just glance at them.
Okay, and authoritative. That meant they had
to feel like undeniable truth, capturing the
subject without any manipulation, without any
sentimentality, just... The facts of the thing.
And transcendent. That's the art part, elevating
the everyday, the common, even the tragic, into
something permanent, something that lasts. And
that mission really comes into focus during his
most famous period, right? Working for the government,
for the Resettlement Administration. Which then
became the Farm Security Administration, or the
FSA, yeah. That work, plus his huge collaboration
on the book, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, that's
what cemented his legacy. And this is why this
deep dive matters so much today, I think. Evans
basically created the template for serious documentary
photography. But in doing that, he also created
a visual language for poverty. That we still
use. And that we still critique. Absolutely.
Understanding how he navigated that tension between
art, documentation, politics and the real lives
of the subjects. It's just crucial for understanding
our own visual world now. The ethical questions
he raised are still with us every single day.
OK, so let's unpack his journey. And we have
to start at the beginning because Evans's background
is it's so important in understanding the kind
of intellectual curiosity he brought to the camera.
It really is. He was born in St. Louis, Missouri
in 19. But he was raised in a, well, a very affluent
world. This was not a starving artist story from
the get go. Not at all. He grew up in wealthy
areas in Toledo, Chicago, New York City. His
father was an advertising director. Which is
interesting. That would have given him an early
look into the power of images. Yeah. Visual persuasion.
Yeah. Even if he later kind of rejected that
whole commercial world. Exactly. And his education
was very privileged. He graduated from Phillips
Academy in 1922, then went to Williams College.
It seems like the formal structure of college
just wasn't for him. He dropped out. After only
a year. But it wasn't because he didn't want
to learn. The sources are really clear on this.
He basically lived in the college library, designing
his own curriculum. Was he studying? French literature.
He was completely obsessed. So his mind was already
steeped in this world of literary modernism,
you know, very structured, very observational.
And when he got back to New York, he takes this
wonderfully. Humble but also very fitting job.
Yeah. He was a night attendant in the map room
of the New York Public Library. You can just
picture it. Right. Surrounded by all this cartography.
Maps are authoritative. They're detailed. They're
silent. It's a perfect visual foundation for
the kind of photography he was about to get into.
And he didn't stay in New York. That literary
passion took him to Paris for a year. A defining
year. It really cemented his connection to that
European high culture, the art scene that was
emerging. So when he comes back, he dives right
into this very sophisticated literary and art
crowd in New York. And these weren't nobodies.
He's friends with the writer John Cheever, the
poet Hart Crane, and maybe most importantly,
this hugely influential arts patron, Lincoln
Kirstein. He was already part of the intellectual
elite way before he was known as a photographer.
But the camera itself doesn't become his main
thing until 1928. It's like he spent his whole
youth... building this intellectual framework.
And then realized that photography was the most
powerful, the most modern tool to express it.
It was a very deliberate shift then. Yeah. From
wanting to be a writer to becoming a visual documentarian.
Very. And his influences weren't American portrait
painters. They were these European masters who
were already creating these huge, systematic
visual catalogs of the world. Who are we talking
about here? Who are these masters? Two main figures.
First, Eugene Atgett, who had been obsessively
documenting old Paris as it was. was disappearing.
His style was very clear, almost clinical. And
the other? August Sandberg. Sandberg was in the
middle of this massive project to catalog all
the different classes and professions in German
society. So they were basically trying to create
visual encyclopedias. Exactly. They were making
authoritative records. Evans just soaked up that
systematic approach, rejecting any kind of sentimentality
for this, this formal clarity that became his
trademark. And it paid off pretty fast. Very
fast. By 1930, just two years after he really
starts taking pictures, his work is getting published
in a huge artistic context. He had three photographs
of the Brooklyn Bridge in Hart Crane's famous
book of poetry, The Bridge. So he wasn't just
illustrating the text. His images were being
treated as visual poems themselves, on the same
level as this vanguard literature. It immediately
elevated his status, and his early patron, Lincoln
Kirstein, saw this unique eye he had. In 1931,
Kirstein sponsors this really important early
project for him. What was that? Documenting Victorian
houses around Boston. And this really establishes
a core theme in all of Evans' work, this fascination
with the anonymous, formal structures of American
life. This is where we need to talk about the
vernacular. Yes. We should probably define that
for listeners. When we say vernacular architecture,
we're talking about everyday, ordinary buildings.
Things that weren't designed by some famous architect.
So like a standard frame house, a roadside sign,
a simple storefront. Exactly. And Evans was giving
these anonymous, commonplace objects the same
kind of formal respect that a classical painter
might give a king's portrait. By taking a picture
of a simple Victorian house with that kind of
clarity, He was making a statement. He was. He
was saying that this ordinary house is just as
important, just as revealing about the American
character as any grand monument. And that idea
becomes the absolute foundation for his most
defining work. So moving on from his origins,
there's this this real crucible moment that defined
his early fieldwork. And it happened in Cuba.
Section two is all about his pre -depression
assignment there in 1933. And this was not a
vacation. No, this was a very serious political
job. It was far more than just an artistic trip.
He was on assignment for the publisher Lippincott.
And what was the book? It was for Carlton Beal's
book, The Crime of Cuba, which the sources describe
as a strident account of the brutal dictatorship
of Gerardo Machado. So Evans wasn't there to
shoot beautiful scenery. He was there to collect
visual evidence against a dictator. He was essentially
a visual investigative reporter. That context
just adds so much weight to the photos he took.
So what did he focus on? What was he looking
for in Havana? He was deliberately looking for
the visible signs. of a repressed society. So
his photos capture the tension of street life,
the obvious poverty. You see beggars, dock workers
in rags, sad waterfront scenes, and then just
the constant oppressive presence of the police
and the military. He didn't capture a riot in
progress. No, the atmosphere of fear and control
was right there in the fabric of the city. 31
of his photos ended up in Beale's book, which
means this was his first real test in creating
that authoritative documentation for really politically
- charge story. And it was the absolute opposite
of his dad's advertising career. This was documentation
meant to expose something, not sell it. And it
was a trial by fire. It allowed him to really
hone his style, that formal composition, incredible
detail, and this very nonjudgmental presentation
of really tough subject matter. He just lets
the subject speak for itself. And this is where
we get that fascinating connection between his
social mission and his literary world. The Hemingway
connection. Yeah, the sources have this great
anecdote. Evans was drinking nightly with Ernest
Hemingway, who was already a big deal in Havana.
And Hemingway becomes a kind of temporary patron.
He does. He lends Evans enough money to extend
his two -week trip for another week. The level
of trust there is pretty remarkable. And he was
more than just a drinking buddy, right? Evans
actually helped him with his work. He did. He
helped Hemingway get his hands on photos from
local newspaper archives, photos that documented
all the political violence. Hemingway needed
that stuff as factual grounding for his novel
to have and have not. So Evans, the literary
guy turned photographer, is now feeding visual
evidence to one of the biggest writers of the
20th century. It's an amazing convergence. But
the most intriguing detail from this whole Cuba
trip comes from the political fear. The story
of the hidden prints. This really highlights
how dangerous it was. Absolutely. Evans knew
that his photos, these unposed shots of police
and poverty, could easily be seen as critical
of the Machado government. He was genuinely afraid
the authorities would just confiscate all his
negatives and prints before he left the country.
So what did he do to protect his work? He took
this huge precaution. He left a batch of 46 prints
with Hemingway for safekeeping. Wow. Yeah. He
took his negatives back to the U .S., but he
hid those 46 prints away in Havana. It was a
pretty dramatic move to protect his work. And
those prints were just gone for decades. For
decades. They just vanished into history, locked
away until they were rediscovered in Havana in
2002. 70 years later. Almost 70 years later.
They were eventually exhibited in Key West. It's
like finding a lost chapter of his artistic development,
one that he intentionally hid to avoid censorship.
That experience definitely hardened his view
of documentation as a political and often dangerous
act. It totally reframes that Cuba trip. It wasn't
just an assignment. It was a critical foundation.
He learned how to work under pressure, under
the threat of official disapproval. And he would
need that experience back in the States very,
very soon. So after that high stakes work in
Cuba, we get to the monumental period. Section
three is where Walker Evans really defines an
era and I think achieves that transcendent quality.
he was aiming for. The sources all agree that
the years 1935 to 1936 were a time of just remarkable
productivity and accomplishment. This is where
his visual catalog of America really begins and
is powered by the New Deal. He starts his government
work in 1935 with this fixed term campaign in
West Virginia and Pennsylvania. Right. At first,
it's just a limited two month job for the Department
of the Interior. His task was to photograph a
government -built resettlement community. What
was that exactly? It was an ambitious project
to build new towns, basically, with housing and
jobs for unemployed coal miners. The government
really needed to show the public that these big
programs were actually working, that they were
real and concrete. And that temporary gig turns
into his career -defining role. He becomes an
information specialist in the Resettlement Administration,
the RA. And the R .A. pretty quickly becomes
the more famous Farm Security Administration,
the FSA, which was part of the Department of
Agriculture. Evans's mission then shifts to focus
almost entirely on the American South, starting
in October 1935. And the FSA's job was to show
the scope of rural poverty and distress. Right.
to justify all this federal aid. Exactly. He
wasn't alone, of course. He was working alongside
other giants like Dorothea Lange. But his style,
his methods, they really set him apart. And we
have to talk about his technical choices here
because it directly connects to that authoritative
feeling of his work. Okay, let's get into that.
Well, the critical point is that he was not using
a small, fast, handheld camera like a 35mm. For
most of his New Deal work, he used a large format
8x10 inch view camera. So for anyone who doesn't
know, what does that mean? An 8x10 camera, what's
the impact of that choice? It means everything
is slow and deliberate. The camera is huge. It's
cumbersome. You need a heavy tripod. You have
to compose the image upside down on a ground
glass under a dark cloth. It's the total opposite
of being spontaneous. The total opposite. The
subject knows they're being photographed. The
photographer has to be completely deliberate.
It forces stillness and formality. But the negative
you get is massive, 8 inches by 10 inches. It
captures an unbelievable amount of detail and
resolution. So that slow... mechanical process
is reinforcing his artistic goal. It makes the
images feel authoritative because the process
itself demands that level of deliberation. Precisely.
The final image is this indisputable high resolution
record. The subject is presented with this kind
of dignity that comes from the formal composition,
even if they're standing in rags. We have some
iconic examples from this time that show this
perfectly. Let's start with Bethlehem Graveyard
and Steel Mill from November 1935 in Pennsylvania.
Yeah, this image is just a masterclass in composition
and social commentary. Evans places St. Michael's
Cemetery right in the foreground. You see the
gravestones, the markers of history, mortality,
the people who came before. And right behind
it. Looming over it are the huge industrial smokestacks
of Bethlehem steel. So it's not just a pretty
picture. It's a very controlled statement about
the American landscape. Absolutely. Industry.
The source of jobs, but also pollution and a
kind of brutal progress is literally standing
on top of the resting place of the workers who
built it. It's a metaphor for these conflicting
priorities, prosperity and exploitation, history
and the future. It's all in one perfectly balanced
frame. This is that literate quality in action.
And his focus wasn't just on industry or faces.
He kept going with that theme. He started with
Lincoln Kirstein documenting the vernacular.
Let's talk about his March 1936 photo, Frame
House, Charleston, South Carolina. That's a great
example of his bigger project, which was cataloging
America. Why photograph a simple, maybe even
rundown frame house? Because he believed that
this anonymous, everyday architecture, the small
church, the gas station, the roadside sign, tells
you more about the soul of a place than a big
government building. He was elevating the commonplace
to the level of high art. He was building this
visual inventory, treating these structures with
this incredible formal seriousness. He was saying,
look at this house. It's important. It's permanent.
It is part of the American visual record. And
his success with the FSA, where he made thousands
of these records, set the stage for his most
fairest and most controversial work. All right,
section four. This is where the artistic triumph
and the most difficult ethical questions of Evans'
career just collide head on. The story of Let
Us Now, Trey's Famous Men. This is the ethical
crucible of his career, no question. It all centered
on his collaboration with the writer James Adagie.
The project starts in the summer of 1936. Evans
takes a leave of absence from the FSA, and he
and Adagie are sent by Fortune magazine down
to Hale County, Alabama. And their assignment
was to report on the lives of white tenant farmers.
A story that would require this just... unprecedented
level of intimacy and access. And here's the
great irony. Fortune commissions this incredibly
intensive piece of journalism, and then they
refuse to publish it. Why? The material was just
too raw. It was too personal, too intense, too
critical of the whole system. It was just considered
too unorthodox for their readers at the time.
But that material, thank goodness, was preserved.
The photos and Abjia's texts were finally published
as the book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men in 1941.
And it documented their stay with three specific
families. Right. The families headed by Bud Fields,
Floyd Burroughs, and Frank Tingle. And specifically,
the images of Allie Mae Burroughs, who was Floyd's
wife, became instantly iconic. Those portraits
are now the quintessential visual shorthand for
Depression -era hardship and quiet dignity. But
the collaboration itself created this powerful
contradiction, what the critic Janet Malcolm
called an anguished dissonance. The text and
the photos almost seem to be fighting with each
other. They absolutely are. Aji's writing is
this desperate, almost overwrought cry of pain.
It's so emotional, so judgmental about the injustices
that trap these families. And it's written with
this intense sense of personal guilt over his
own role as an observer. But Evans's photos?
Evans's photos are the exact opposite. They're
silent. They're so formally composed, symmetrical.
They have this, as Malcolm called it, quiet,
magisterial beauty. They are facts, not sermons.
He was deliberately refusing to get caught up
in Eiji's emotional storm. Completely. His pictures
presented the interiors of their cabins, the
faces of the kids, the clothes they wore as these
formal, almost classical subjects. The message
feels like Eiji's telling you how awful they
feel, but I'm showing you the enduring architectural
facts of their existence. And in that... They
possess dignity. And that artistic difference
is what leads to the core ethical problem, something
the families had to deal with for the rest of
their lives. For sure. The sources detailed the
controversy and the resentment felt by the descendants
decades later. I mean, there was immediate fear.
The landowners told the families that Evans and
Agee were Soviet agents. Yeah, trying to scare
them into not cooperating. Allie Mae Burroughs
later said she didn't believe that, but the deeper
sense of being exploited, that stayed. The burden
of being the subject of iconic art about poverty
is... It's just profound. It is. The sources
talk about the pain that was still there when
Fortune magazine went back to Hale County in
2005 for their 75th anniversary. They talked
to Charles Burroughs, who was Floyd and Ali May's
son. He was only four when Evans and Agee were
there. And even after all that time? Over 60
years later, Charles Burroughs was, and I'm quoting,
still angry at them. That is a deep, persistent
wound. What was he angry about specifically?
A couple of things. One, that they never even
sent the family a copy of the book. He felt like
they were just used and then discarded. But more
than that, he was angry that his family was,
in his words, cast in a light that they couldn't
do any better, that they were doomed, ignorant.
Doomed, ignorant. Wow. That's just a heartbreaking
summary of how this subject can feel betrayed.
Evans' goal was transcendence, but for the family,
the result was feeling like their own agency
was stripped away and they were just fixed forever
as these symbols of misery. It forces us to ask
that question. When documentation serves a big
artistic or political agenda, even a noble one,
can the artist ever be truly nonjudgmental without
causing harm to the person who becomes the symbol?
The whole complex legacy of that book is that
its artistic triumph came at a real last. So
Evan stays with the FSA until 1938. But his career
just explodes beyond government work after that.
And 1938, according to the sources, was this
year of just incredible milestones for him. It
was a huge year. In 1938, the Museum of Modern
Art MoMA gives him a solo exhibition called Walker
Evans, American Photographs. This was, I mean,
groundbreaking. It was the first exhibition in
the museum's entire history that was devoted
to the work of a single photographer. That's
the highest form of validation you can get. It
officially puts documentary photography on the
same level as painting or sculpture. just a government
photographer anymore. He's a major artist. Exactly.
And the catalog for that show had an essay by
his old friend and patron, Lincoln Kirstein.
So this is his canonization. But at the exact
same time, he's starting one of his most radical
and covert experiments. This is the hidden camera
project in the New York City subway. Yes. Also
starting in 1938. For this, he used a camera
hidden inside his coat, which let him photograph
people on the subway completely unposed and totally
unaware. It's such a contrast to the formal 8x10
work. The FSA work captured the public face of
America, the storefront, the house, the posed
portrait. The Subway series feels like it's capturing
the private, internal world of the city dweller.
It's a totally different kind of document. It's
about spontaneity, intimacy, the unintentional
theater of city life. He's capturing isolation,
exhaustion, private thoughts in this really dense
public space. The photos were later collected
in the book Many Are Called. And his influence
wasn't just in his own work. He was passing it
on to the next generation. Oh, absolutely. From
1938 to 1939, he's working with and mentoring
Helen Levitt, who goes on to become a giant of
New York street photography in her own right.
His circle was really the nucleus of modern documentary
art. There's a fascinating detail about his process,
though, specifically about printing. For someone
so obsessed with the final image, he was surprisingly
hands -off in the darkroom. This tells you so
much about what he valued. The sources say that,
kind of like Henri Cartier -Bresson, Evans almost
never spent time physically making prints from
his own negatives. Because who did it? He'd delegate
it. He would loosely supervise the process, but
sometimes he would just attach these handwritten
notes to the negatives with instructions on how
the final print should look. So his genius was
in the capture. The vision. Yeah. Not the chemical
process. Exactly. The authority of the image
was locked in the moment the shutter clicked,
thanks to his composition in that incredible
large format camera. The physical print was just
a technical task that needed to be managed as
long as it met his standards. And then his career
takes this huge shift away from being in the
field and into these positions of institutional
power. He was becoming a real... Right. First,
he keeps getting validation for his own work.
He gets three Guggenheim fellowships between
1940 and 1959, which lets him keep documenting
America long after the FSA was gone. Then he
moves into these big editorial jobs. He becomes
a staff writer at Time magazine in 1945. And
then shortly after, an editor at Fortune from
1945 all the way to 1965. And think about the
irony there. The same magazine that rejected
his work. The very same magazine that found his
groundbreaking story on the Alabama tenant farmers
too radical in 1936. He's now one of their editors
and gatekeepers for two decades. So he goes from
being the subject matter expert to the institutional
authority, shaping what gets published in elite
American media. And his final professional chapter
is in academia, another key step in the institutionalization
of photography. In 1965, he becomes a professor
of photography on the graphic design faculty
at the Yale University School of Art. That whole
progression from field photographer to magazine
editor to university professor, it mirrors the
growing acceptance of photography as a serious
art form. And he was central to making that happen.
And his final projects, they reflect both his
old style and, well, his age. In 1968, he does
this formal black and white portfolio for the
investment bank Brown Brothers Harriman, the
same authoritative style he used on sharecroppers
he's now using on corporate power. And then his
very last work in 73 and 74 uses this brand new
technology, the Polaroid SX -70 instant camera.
Yeah, the sources say Polaroid knew who he was
and just gave him an unlimited supply of film.
After decades with that slow, heavy 8x10 camera,
the instant simplicity of the Polaroid was just
much easier for him as an older man. It shows
he never lost that desire to capture the world
right up to the very end. Okay, so Section 6
brings us to his legacy, the definitive recognition
he received, and this really crucial legal detail
that shapes how we all see his images today.
If we're trying to nail down his aesthetic, Evans
actually gave it a name himself. He did. During
a lecture at Yale in 1964, he called his own
work lyric documentary. Which is perfect. It
really is. It's the perfect summary of that tension
we've been talking about. Documentary because
it's based, in fact, in truth. But lyric because
of the composition, the beauty. The formal poetry
of it all. And other critics kept coming back
to his focus on common things. Jane Tormey described
his later work as having a vernacular style,
just hammering home that core idea he pursued
his whole life, elevating the everyday. And the
art world gave him that final definitive stamp
of approval while he was still alive. After that
first MoMA show in 38, the first really definitive
retrospective of his work came in 1971, curated
by the legendary John Zarkowski. It was just
called Walker Evans. The sheer scope of it confirmed
his status as an essential American artist. And
that recognition has just kept going. In 2000,
The Met held another huge retrospective. He was
inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame. And
you can see his influence in just the sheer volume
of his work held in museums all over the world.
The Art Institute of Chicago, the Getty, has
over 1 ,300 of his works. His vision is preserved
and accessible. He died in New Haven, Connecticut
in 1975 at 71 after a stroke. But even the story
of his final conversation. is all about his life's
work. His focus was just unwavering. Hank O 'Neill,
who was putting together this project about the
FSA photographers called A Vision Shared, said
that Evans called him to talk about finding one
specific picture for the project. And that conversation
about finding the Zach Wright visual document
happened just an hour and a half before he died.
It's incredible. It just underscores that his
whole life was this constant, diligent assembly
of the American visual inventory right up to
his very last moments. Okay, so now we get to
this crucial... legal detail about his legacy,
the copyright distinction. This is the ultimate
irony, and it's so important for how we see his
work today. It is. There's a huge split in who
owns his work, and it affects everyone, including
you listening right now. Let's break it down.
Okay, so in 1994, Evans' estate transferred most
of its holdings, the subway series, the Cuba
photos, all the later independent work, to the
Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Met is the sole
copyright holder for the vast majority of his
images. So if you want to use those photos, you
have to go through the Met. But there's this
massive, crucial exception. The one that changes
everything. The group of about a thousand negatives
that he created specifically for the Resettlement
Administration and the Farm Security Administration,
those are in the collection of the Library of
Congress. And because he made those images while
he was a U .S. government employee as part of
a public work program. They are in the public
domain. So the most famous, most historically
important, most reproduced images, the portrait
of L .A. Mayboros, the Alabama interiors, the
iconic frame houses of the Depression are completely
free for anyone to use, study and republish.
It's this accidental but really profound outcome.
The images that were commissioned to justify
some temporary government aid became this permanent
free gift to the visual history of the entire
country. His desire for transcendence found its
ultimate expression in public access. So wrapping
up this deep dive, we've traced a career that
really synthesized this literary rigor with a
kind of photographic formality. He goes from
this affluent intellectual background to creating
the defining, nonjudgmental visual record of
American hardship. He absolutely achieved his
goal of making pictures that were authoritative
and transcendent. But the enduring tension for
me is still the ethical complexity of Let Us
Now Praise Famous Men. His documentation, as
important as it is to history, had a real lasting
impact on the lives of the people he photographed.
That feeling of exposure, of being fixed in time,
is doomed ignorant, as Charles Burroughs put
it. It just reminds you that the power of the
documentarian is immense, and it comes with this
lasting responsibility. It forces us to constantly
think about that relationship between the artist
and the subject, especially in times of crisis.
When the images become transcendent art, what
moral debt is owed to the person in the frame?
That's the tension that will always define the
genre he helped perfect. And that leads us right
back to that final, fascinating twist of his
legacy. Evans wanted his work to be permanent
and transcendent. We talked about how his FSA
work, the stuff he did on the government's payroll,
is now in the public domain. Which ensures that
those images of the Great Depression, the faces,
the homes, the landscapes, can be endlessly reproduced,
reinterpreted, and reused. It guarantees their
immortality in a way that goes far beyond what
the New Deal agencies ever intended. It's an
enduring, free, and public record of a pivotal
moment in history. But here's the provocative
thought we want to leave you with. Does the universal
public domain availability of those FSA photos,
which guarantees they'll be seen by billions,
offer a strange kind of retroactive justice to
the subjects, like the Burroughs family, who
felt so exploited by the art? Or does that public
access simply perpetuate the symbolic representation
of their suffering forever, denying them ownership
of their own story for all time? The visual history
of America remains a truly permanent but perpetually
complicated vision.