Who is Walker Evans from On Photography and what is their importance?

Evans (1903-1975) was an American photographer who worked for the Farm Security Administration photographic project of the late 1930s. His stated goal was to take authoritative photographs. His photographs are widely held in permanent museum collections. Evans, along with writer James Agee, published Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, a book detailing the lives of poor farming families mired in rural poverty. The book and other of Evans's work are considered at some length in chapter two of the text, though virtually no biographic data are offered. Sontag asserts that Evans was the final great American photographer to believe in a legitimate sense of euphoric humanism. In chapter two she compares his 1924 Chicago street photographs to the work of Diane Arbus.