Olivier Richon provides a detailed examination of Walker Evans’s now-iconic 1936 photograph Kitchen Corner; in doing so he reveals an unexpected set of visual and literary associations that lie beneath the surface.

Walker Evans’s Kitchen Corner, Tenant Farmhouse, Hale County, Alabama shows a painstakingly clean-swept corner in the house of a family of white sharecroppers. Taken in 1936, the photograph was not published until 1960, when it was included in a new edition of Evans and James Agee’s classic Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. The 1960 reissue of the book had an enormous impact on perceptions of the Great Depression and its effects on the American South.

Olivier Richon’s detailed examination of the image, reveals unexpected visual and literary associations. Richon argues that Evans employs a photographic form that privileges detachment, calling attention to overlooked objects and the architecture of the dispossessed.

This title is part of the One Work book series, which focuses on the artworks that have significantly shaped the way we understand art and its history.