A Couple in Coney Island by Walker Evans

Walker Evans first started out as an aspiring writer his father had a career in advertising, where he wrote ads to persuade people to buy something. Looking up to his father this is where his original dram started but it was in Paris he realized what he truly wanted to do- photographer. Walker Evans didn’t believe in fancy photography, staged moments and objects carefully arranged, or artsy hard to interpret images. He believed that life itself was beautiful and hard to understand as it is. He took photos of life that happened everyday, photos of moments we passed by usually, capturing the simplest things and showing their beauty. This is where this moment came from, “A couple at Coney island,” two people enjoying a personal moment of many that walker Evans captured in his lens. A simple title, a simple picture- of the most complicated thing of all, life that no one can even begins to understand.

In this picture there are two people, a man and a women on a day on the still famous Coney Island boardwalk. At first glance all I saw was a couple standing looking out into the water, but when I look closer I can see the true difference between this and an ad, the woman in particular I find the most interesting. The man in this photograph looks clean, fresh- his suit straight out of the store, his build perfect like a mannequin, his jacket artfully hung over his arm, but his partner is so different from the usual women in most photographs hung on the sturdy arm of a man. Their waists are small and cinched their stature petite and fragile their grasps on the man loose and feeble, hands feminine and slender draped on his shoulder. But this woman is tall almost surpassing the man, her arms are burly like that of a laborer, her waist wide as her loose dress simply hangs around it. If you look in general you can see similarities to her and the other women, but if you look closely you see how she grounds the picture and shows the real aspect of it.  The other thing I noticed most was the way thy held each other-tightly conveying the love that passed between them looking out on the water, the picture taken from behind hiding whatever they see.

I think the meaning behind this photograph was to truly show the beliefs of walker Evans in photography. This picture shows not only the simplicity of life but at this moment in time the simplicity of love. This photo shows a couple looking out over the railing but I think in a way it could symbolize them staring out into the future an unknown place we can’t look into. They look silent to me, still and quiet taking in everything that is happening and grasping onto each other as to perhaps keep a hold of reality, to feel something warm and real beneath their palm, not to get lost in fantasies. They could be sharing small conversation but they look to deep in thought their body language speaking for itself, and walker Evans saw this in the moment, he registered al this in a second in a bright flash, capturing nothing staged, nothing fake- just raw life.