Walker Evans (1903-1975) TWO BOBBINS, IVORY COAST, 1935. Vintage silver gelatin contact print, sheet size 205 x 255mm, annotated ‘Walker Evans’ and numbered ‘R-509’ and ‘135-41’ in pencil verso. The present contact print, uncropped and with an uncharacteristic shadow in its lower left corner, is likely a working print used during Walker Evans’ commission to document the works included in the Museum of Modern Art’s 1935 landmark exhibition African Negro Art. In 2000, The Metropolitan Museum of Art organised Perfect Documents: Walker Evans and African Art, 1935, an exhibition that explored this multifaceted commission, which saw Evans photograph over 600 sculptures during the course of the six-week exhibition. In the catalogue that accompanied the Met’s exhibition, curator Virginia-Lee Webb writes, “If unwanted elements found their way into the negative or print, he simply cut them away. Evans’ repuation as a ruthless editor of his own work is strikingly demonstrated in the African art series, as is his highly personal and stylized approach.” (p.44) A print of the finished study, without shadow, is held by the Getty Museum, Los Angeles, ref. 84.XM.488.25.