Leica M2 black paint 'Walker Evans' *

Original black paint M2, owned and used by the famous U.S. photographer Walker Evans, in good condition (original vulcanite replaced), screw-mount collapsible Summicron 2/5cm no.1325828, provenance: a personal and professional assistant of Mr. Evans who inherited the camera.

Mr Evans bought this camera in 1962 and used it for as long as he used the 35mm format, until 1973 (when he began to use a Polaroid SX-70 almost exclusively). Also included in the lot a book: Jerry L. Thompson 'The Last Years of Walker Evans' which includes photos Evans took with a Leica camera, and a special publication by Jerry L. Thompson 'Photographic Equipment Owned by Walker Evans at the Time of His Death' (one of only 20 copies printed in 2021). This special book reveals that Walker Evans, among other equipment, only owned two Leica M cameras - the M2 black paint no.1031865 (sold at our auction in 2020), and the offered here no.1031809.

Walker Evans (1903-1975) was an American photographer and photojournalist. He is widely acknowledged as one of the most important photographers of the twentieth century and worked primarily in the US. His enormous artistic influence has been recognized not only there, but also internationally. He is best known for his work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) documenting the effects of the Great Depression on the rural population in the Mid 1930s. The portraits of the three families Fields, Borroughs and Tingle became icons of photography history. After 1945, Evans photographed, among others, American urban landscapes and industrial buildings for magazines like Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, Architectural Forum, Life and Fortune. Because of his documentary style, he is considered the forerunner of the German photographer couple Bernd and Hilla Becher. In 1938 the MoMa organized the first exhibition for a single photographer for Walker Evans: American Photographs. Since then, many of his works are in permanent collections of museums or have been the subject of retrospectives at institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the George Eastman Museum, the Centre Pompidou, or, most notably at Museum of Modern Art, New York and at the J. Paul Getty Museum in California, USA.