Walker Evans (1903–1975)

In the Spring of 1933, twenty-nine year-old Walker Evans sailed to Cuba, just months before dictator Gerardo Machado was deposed. Commissioned by Philadelphia publisher J.B. Lippincott, Evans was on assignment to photograph the country for Carleton Beal’s book, The Crime of Cuba, which was highly critical of the Cuban government. While there, Evans famously met Ernest Hemingway, only a few years his senior, and a friendship emerged. Indeed, over the following three weeks, the two would weave an artistic dialogue, exchanging photographs and letters relating to their experience in Cuba. While Hemingway would go on to write To Have and Have Not, Evans produced over 400 negatives during his time in the country, many of which were intimate, up close portraits of everyday people, from street vendors to dock workers.