Evans wanted his photographs to be 'literate, authoritative, transcendent.' The moral universe of the 1930s being no longer ours, these adjectives are barely creditable today. Nobody demands that photography be literate. Nobody can imagine how it could be authoritative. Nobody understands how anything, least of all a photograph, could be transcendent.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Photographer Evans wanted work to be literate and transcendent, but modern audiences no longer demand or believe in those qualities.
- In plain terms
- Evans wanted photos to be transcendent but no one expects that today.
- What can you take from it?
- High artistic ambitions may no longer align with modern expectations.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- What makes art transcendent?
- Has photography lost its spiritual role?
Another view
Some photographers still strive for these qualities successfully.
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