Walker Evans did more to expand the art and language of documentary photography than any other photographer, influencing generations of image-makers. He created some of the most memorable images of social and photographic history, and is best-known for his direct, descriptive photographs of vernacular scenes?particularly those of rural America, made during the Great Depression while Evans was working for the Farm Security Administration. His work about three sharecropping families in the South resulted in the groundbreaking book, coauthored with James Agee, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941).

David Campany is one of the finest and most accessible writers on photography. He has published several books, among them The Open Road (Aperture, 2014), Walker Evans: The Magazine Work (2013), and Photography and Cinema (2008). He contributes regularly to a range of publications, including Aperture and Frieze, and teaches at the University of Westminster, London. His recent curatorial projects include Walker Evans: Anonymous (Rencontres de la Photographie, Arles, France, 2015) and A Handful of Dust (Le Bal, Paris, 2014).