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Many Are Called "Each is an individual existence, as matchless as a thumbprint or a snowflake." -from Agee's Introduction FIRST EDITION of one of Evans’s most celebrated works, with introduction by James Agee and more than 150 reproductions of Evans's photographs of New York City subway riders; the preferred cloth/dust jacket issue (issued simultaneously in wrappers). "In his subway series (shot from around 1938 and into the 1940s, but only published in 1966), Evans concealed a Contax camera beneath his coat, so that he could snap subway passengers without their knowledge... The results are remarkably vibrant and sympathetic. The book builds like a series of film stills, each anonymous life segueing into the next. These travellers are largely devoid of overt signs of class... united by the wearying business of burrowing underground like moles. And yet, on closer inspection, the book's tone seems more positive. It speaks less of a population wearied by the vicissitudes of urban life, than of the way in which people simply withdraw into themselves during the interlude of travel between work and home. Evans's subway passengers may be lost souls, but they are also souls lost in thought" (Parr/Badger, The Photobook, I.253). Roth 180; Hasselblad 218. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966. Octavo, original cloth, original dust jacket. Book fine, dust jacket some chipping and creasing to edges. $900.
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