Cropped

Walker Evans took this photograph in March 1936, labeling it "Negro House/New Orleans, Louisiana." The location of the multi-unit wooden structure is unknown as there do not appear to be any discernible street numbers. The box columns and louvred shutters are typical New Orleans features. The nitrate negative resides in the Library of Congress [digital id cph 3g01793].

I recently came across the copy print below in the SEAA's Miscellaneous Photographs Collection as "unidentified." It seems fairly certain that it was taken just moments before the LC image; the fellow in the wheelchair having departed the porch in the later photograph. The General Outdoor Advertising Company's brand new Heinz billboard in the SEAA photograph is quite a contrast to the battered tenement.


Photographs housed in the SEAA frequently represent individual structures in a portrait-like fashion, any sense of surrounding context out of the camera's frame. Researchers' inquiries often have us wishing we had more representations of vistas, street scenes, the urban context for the structures. Sometimes we do, more often we don't.

Image upper: Walker Evans. Negro House/New Orleans, Louisiana. March 1936. Prints & Photographs Division, Library of Congress.

Image lower: Walker Evans. Unidentified street/New Orleans, Louisiana. March 1936. Copy print (presumably from an LC negative). Miscellaneous Photographs Collection, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Natchez, Mississippi 1940

Marion Post Wolcott. Unidentified Structure in Natchez, MS. August 1940. Digital reproduction from color slide. FSA/OWI Color Photographs, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. LC-USF35-115.

Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographer Marion Post Wolcott shot this image in the autumn of 1940. The digital reproduction is part of a Library of Congress pilot initiative to make some of its Prints and Photographs Division holdings available through Flickr, the photograph-sharing website. Begun in January of this year, the LC project was primarily intended as a means to make its collections known to a wider audience in a cost effective manner. The planners also hoped that viewers would contribute to the identification process, which would result in improving the cataloging for the related image, and thereby increase access. Architects have been especially helpful in this regard. To hear more about the logistics of the project, including copyright and non-exclusivity issues, click here.

Marion Post Wolcott (1910-1990) traveled extensively throughout the southeastern United States while working for the FSA. Among many other places, she visited the New Orleans Quarantine Station in Algiers, a Juke Joint in Melrose, and a Fish Shack in Natchitoches. Her daughter, Linda Wolcott Moore, maintains a sizable archive of her original negatives and has published a biographical sketch here.

New Orleans Location Unknown: UPhO #1

Walker Evans took this photograph in January 1936 for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). He identified it on a caption card as "Degenerate period of early twentieth-century New Orleans architecture. Louisiana."

PBS will air a new documentary about the FSA starting in August. "Documenting the Face of America: Roy Stryker and the F.S.A./O.W.I Photographers" is narrated by the chairman of the N.A.A.C.P. Julian Bond. It will air on station WLPB on August 18 at 9:00 pm.

Does anyone know where this structure was/is? This is the first in a new series of Unidentified Photograph Objects. . . from the collection of the Southeastern Architectural Archive. The reproduction of the uncropped print from the nitrate negative (click on thumbnail in the above right) may help for context.

UPDATE: Thanks to flickr anthonyturducken for ID-ing this house as the structure at 1439 Annunciation!

[Photograph Left: Detail of Walker Evans, Degenerate Period of Early Twentieth-Century New Orleans Architecture. 01.1936. Copy print from the FSA-OWI Collection/Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress LC-USF342-001291-A. Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries; Right: Walker Evans, Degenerate Period of Early Twentieth-Century New Orleans Architecture. 01.1936. Uncropped print from nitrate negative, FSA-OWI Collection/Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress LC-USF342-001291-A. ]