ABSTRACT
James Agee's self-proclaiming literary techniques are extremely stylized, as are Walker Evans’ photographic techniques, albeit that the style of the latter is ordinary and conventional. If Evans' intention in the Farm Security Administration photographs was "to demonstrate the value of the people photographed," his intention in American Photographs may not be the opposite, but it is clearly different. In Evans' photographs of houses, it is the clarity and precision of the representation, plus the distinct ornateness of the specimen, that make them different. In Evans' America the beautiful is invariably promoted by the ugliest and crudest of advertising displays. Evans' major insight into the character of a society dominated by industrial process is the deadening effect of impersonal mechanical duplication. Evans is the exact opposite of "process" photographers like Cartier-Bresson and Weegee, who pursue the sudden and surprising apprehension of a moment of revealing action.
