Thursday, January 3, 2008

Walker Evans on Fourth Street

Street view, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

I've been a Walker Evans fan for a long time, and there are lots of his images that I like. This one was taken in November, 1935, in South Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Evans worked for the Farm Security Administration for a couple of years (along with many other photographers), taking pictures of industrial towns and agricultural areas around the United States. I spent a couple of years in graduate school in Bethlehem in the mid-1980s and, except for the cars, Bethlehem looked pretty much the same. The steel mill is gone now, and I have not been back to Bethlehem in many years, so this scene may be different now.

Update (9/11/2019): This is Fourth Street now (via Google street view):

Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

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