As the first biographer with unrestricted access to Evans’s papers, James R. Mellow has done a beautiful job of sorting through those contradictions. His conclusion: the elusive Evans played all those roles sometimes simultaneously. Unfortunately, Mellow died in 1997 before he could finish what is still a massive book. But even abbreviated, this is a wonderfully definitive portrait of a great artist.
Walker Evans.James R. Mellow. (Basic Books) 654 pages. $40.
