Reflections: Mazie Harris on Walker Evans

As we all

adapt to working and living under these new and unusual circumstances caused by

the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve asked curators from the Getty Museum and Getty

Research Institute to share short reflections on works of art they’re thinking

about right now. These brief recordings feature stories related to our daily lives—from laundry on the line to a dog at a

scholar’s feet. Over the next few weeks, look for new recordings every Tuesday.

This week

features photography curator Mazie Harris discussing Walker Evans’s Washington Street, New York City / Wash

Day (ca. 1930).

To view this artwork, visit:  https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/45404/

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Transcript

JAMES CUNO: Hi, I’m Jim Cuno, president of the J.

Paul Getty Trust. As we all adapt to working and living under these new and

unusual circumstances, we’ve asked curators from the Getty Museum and Getty

Research Institute to share short reflections on works of art they’re thinking

about right now. We’ll be releasing new recordings on Tuesdays over the next

few weeks. I hope you’ll find these stories about our daily lives—from

laundry on the line to a dog at a scholar’s feet—thought provoking,

illuminating, and entertaining.

MAZIE HARRIS: My name is Mazie Harris. I’m one of the

photography curators here at the Getty, and working at home these days I feel

like all I do is laundry and dishes non-stop. So I find myself appreciating all

the more this photograph by Walker Evans.

It looks like the photographer walked between two buildings

and glanced up to see these crisscrossed lines of laundry hanging out to dry. There’s

such delight in this sort of, it’s just like an everyday occurrence. And, I

don’t know, looking at laundry dry seems like it would be just devastatingly

boring and yet Evans makes it look like a lively musical score. The fabrics

bellow in the wind, the sweet string of socks swaying against each other in the

bottom left corner. It evokes full lives and loving labor. It’s all here

illuminated and abstracted against a blank sky.

Photographers have such an incredible ability to make the

mundane visually interesting. Photographs remind us to look, look, look, to

look carefully. To be observant. And I’m grateful to be reminded of that as I

pull yet another load of laundry from the washer or endlessly plunk dishes into

the drainer by the sink. This photograph reminds me to try to find beauty in

even the most banal places.

CUNO: To view this photograph by Walker Evans, titled Washington Street, New York City /

Wash Day and made around 1930, click the link in this episode’s

description or look for it on getty.edu/art/collection/.