A mid-1930s photo by Evans of Alabama sharecropper Frank Tengle and his family singing hymns.

I came across this interview that some students conducted with the legendary photographer Walker Evans in 1974. It’s from the archives of Image Magazine.

Evans was a Farm Security Administration photographer who traveled the South during the Great Depression with James Agee; from that experience, they ultimately created Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. During this Q&A, he discussed politics, art, his aesthetic and technology. Evans died just a year after this interview took place.

In one passage, Evans talked about teaching photography, but he might as well be talking about teaching in general. An excerpt:

“Interviewer: What do you tell your students?

Walker Evans: First of all, I tell them that art can’t be taught, but that it can be stimulated and a few barriers can be kicked down by a talented teacher, and an atmosphere can be created which is an opening into artistic action. But the thing itself is such a secret and so unapproachable. And you can’t put talent into anybody. I think you ought to say so right away and then try to do something else. And that’s what a university is for, what it should be–a place for stimulation and an exchange of ideas and a chance to give people the privilege of beginning to take some of the richness of general life that’s in everybody and has to be unlocked.”