Walker Evans Traveled to Florida to Take the Photo Graphs That Were Published a Year Later in Bickel's the Mangrove Coast
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Commissionedin 1941 by writer Karl Bickel, Walker Evans traveled to Florida to take the photo graphs that were published a year later in Bickel's The Mangrove Coast. These photographs constitute a little-known chapter in Evans's long career. Pelicans, trailer homes, dancing circus elephants from the Bingling Bros, winter quarters in Sarasota —the imagery Evans found in Florida was far removed from the Depression-era America with which this master photographer is so often associated. Walker Evans-. Floridabrings together fifty-four of Evans's photo graphs of Florida, accompanied by an essay by novelist Bobert Plunket, who lives in Sarasota. Plunket's wry account of the human and geographic landscape of Florida provides a superb counterpoint to Evans's pho tographs, revealing a side of Evans's career that may come as something of a surprise to many of his admirers. FRONT COVER: Trailer in Camp. Sarasota: see page 56. RACK COVER: Three• Palms : see page 53. WALKER EVANS Florida With an essay by Robert Plunket The J. Paul Getty Museum # Los Angeles of his research was The Mangrove Coast: The Story of the West Coast of Florida. It is a book that ranges from the geology of Introduction: the region to the legends of its explorers Evans in Florida, 1941 to the author's personal reminiscences about favorite fishing trips. The Mangrove Coast concerns a stretch of the state along the Gulf of viii L- ongtime newspaperman Karl Mexico described by Bickel as extending Bickel retired with his wife to Sarasota, "from Ancolote Anchorage to Sanibel Florida, in 1985. Bickel had been presi- Key and then tapering off from Sanibel dent of what was then called United southward to the distant mouth of the Press Associations (nowUPI) from Shark." Bickel declares that the attrac- 1938 to 1985, had written the bookJVeK; tion of the Mangrove Coast is actually Empires: The Newspaper and the Radio to be found, not in its past, but "in its (1980), and, in 1983, had confidentially intangibles: the gleam of white sand, advised Charles Lindbergh on how to the softness of southwest winds, pink deal with the media during the ordeal of and turquoise sunsets, and the abiding his son's kidnapping. In the quiet resort simplicity of its people." town of Sarasota (population 8,000), It does seem strange that Walker Bickel quickly became a community Evans (1908—1975), a photographer who leader working toward economic as well consistently maintained that he found as cultural improvements. He also took nature uninteresting, was selected to up the hobby of investigating the history provide illustrations for a book about of the west coast of the state. The result the historical myths and natural beauty of the nation's vacationland, its south- parable to his igSS work in Cuba and his ernmost state. But whatever the reasons Depression-era pictures "from the field" for the offer, Evans was happy to accept for the Resettlement Administration. the job of illustrating Bickel's book, The selection of Evans's Florida which involved a six-week trip to Florida photographs presented here is accom- in 1941 and paid him a much-needed fee. panied by an essay by novelist Robert The Mangrove Coast appeared in Plunket, who lives in Sarasota. Mr. 1943 in a first edition that consisted of Plunket knows Florida intimately, Bickel's text (with an epilogue written and his wry assessment of the Bickel— ix that January reflecting the recent effects Evans collaboration places these of wartime on Florida's west coast), fol- little-known photographs within the lowed by a portfolio of thirty-two pho- colorful context of the Mangrove Coast. tographs by Evans, introduced with his captions. This group of pictures is pos- Judith Keller sibly the least known of Evans's pre-1945 Associate Curator works and survives in very few 19408 Department of Photographs prints, most of them now located at the Getty Museum. Their importance has been overshadowed by Evans's New York A Technical Note Museum's collection, the their dimensions and acces- subway series of the same period, but largest holding of prints sion numbers, beginning on Walker Evans: Florida made by Walker Evans him- page 64. Further information they exhibit the photographer's eye in contains fifty-four gelatin self. A few of the photo- about the prints, as well as an equally exceptional way and, with silver photographs, a num- graphs have been slightly the entire Getty collection of ber of which were first pub- cropped, and a very few Evans's work, can be found more exposure, should be accepted as a lished in Karl Bickel's The have been significantly in my Walker Evans: The significant phase in the development of Mangrove Coast (1942). cropped. All of the pho- Getty Museum Collection All of the images were tographs are reproduced in (1995). Evans's mature documentary style, com- selected from the Getty- their complete form, with J.K. It is not to be denied that full half of the tourists and travellers that come to Florida return intensel y xi disappointed, and even disgusted. Why? — Harriet Beecher Stowe Palmetto Leaves. 187 8 Walker Evans, the Mangrove Coast, and Me by Robert Plunket Call me Mr. Chatterbox. 1 Just about everyone in Sarasota does. For the past fifteen years I have been one of the town's leading gossip col- umnists. I've covered everything from charity balls to the Mayor's Prayer Breakfast, from the high-school prom to the opening night of the French Film Festival, where Jeanne Moreau and Audrey Hepburn, dressed to the nines, vied for "best entrance." (Audrey won.) I've roasted politicians, I've emceed charity auctions, I've modeled sports- wear to benefit the Humane Society. I've even interviewed Warren Burger and Pia Zadora, although not at the same time. PAGE xii Two Giraffes, Circus Winter Quarters, Sarasota PAGE 3 Concrete Block Building with Shell Decoration 2 And in doing so I've learned a lot about Florida. It really is different down here—the way it looks, the weather, the social patterns, the brand-newness of the place. Everybody comes from some- where else, which means he has secrets from his past back in Dayton, and in a Even the art is different. True, number of cases those secrets involve there is much conventional art—paint- former wives who disappeared under ings, performances, etc. But the really mysterious circumstances. An amazing interesting artistic endeavors are usual- number of people blow into town, make ly disguised as something else —a a splashy name for themselves, and then theme park, a mystery novel, a coconut, are arrested. The buying and selling even a simple vacation photograph. of real estate is the dominant industry. Walker Evans took many photographs Indeed, it could be said that the real- here in 1941, but they are not, definitely estate ad is the principal form of litera- not, vacation photographs. They are ture here. something else entirely. OPPOSITE Mystery Ship Roadside Bar Ii first became interested in Walker 5 Evans because I am what you might call a biography freak. They are my favorite form of reading. I haunt the "New Books" section at Selby Library at least once a week, looking for the latest. I'll read anything, but I find myself most drawn to the lives of those tortured twentieth- century American writers, the ones who smoke and drank too much and then died young, thus becoming instant legends. One thing I've noticed is that in an astonishing number of these books, the name Walker Evans keeps popping up. Two of Evans's closest friends have particularly interested me. The first was OPPOSITE Souvenir Shop Display RIGHT Racetrack Spectators Hart Crane, one of the great poets of 7 the twenties. Talk about intense: he worked on one poem for seven years— The Bridge—for which Evans took the frontispiece photograph. Crane was a binge drinker and an indefatigable sailor-chaser, that is, until he sur- prised everyone by running off with Malcolm Cowley's wife. They went to Mexico and moved in with Katherine Anne Porter. But on the way back, Crane had second thoughts and jumped ship, literally, leaping off the stern of the SS Orizaba and drowning just north of Havana. James Agee was even stranger. His career was the triumph of the will. 8 Nobody wanted to be a great writer Evans is the mystery of the trio. more that he. He published one very One reason may be that he lacked the good novel, A Death in the Family, more energy of his friends. He was cool, or less to prove that he could, but he passive, shy, more a voyeur than a partici- is best remembered for his collabo- pant. Evans didn't wear his heart on his ration with Evans, Let Us Now Praise sleeve like Crane and Agee. He loved Famous Men, and his screenplay for people-watching, particularly when he The African Queen. Like Crane he died could do it in a reclining position. Today young, a heart attack in a taxicab. there are many artists like him—Andy He was literally worn out by art. He was Warhol and R. Crumb leap to mind—but one of the original "problem smokers"; Walker Evans was, back in the '3os and he had a bad heart but couldn't stop '408, ahead of his time, personality-wise. his constant intake of nicotine. Women An example: he embraced the com- found him very sexy in a Nicolas Cage mercial. Indeed, his career was one sort of way, and as he is a biographer's of moving from job to job.