Washington Post: “National Gallery’s ‘I Spy’ examines the assumed reality of candid photography”
“Much of the social despair, isolation and pathology once seen as particularly urban has gravitated out of the cities, to the lands where people bowl alone and cook meth in beat-up trailers.”
“But perhaps to some extent, they are collectively registering the annoyance of being women in a world of the male gaze. They don’t respond directly to Callahan’s camera, but they wear the protective mask of women who are used to being stared at, registering existential annoyance at a world in which men play games like the one Callahan is playing.”
Admitting that he was “a penitent spy and an apologetic voyeur,” Evans believed that one should “stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something.
In this “grim, abusive, violent, and often beautiful reality of the subway,” he wrote, “we confront our mortality, contemplate our destiny, and experience both the beauty and the beast….Trapped inside” the moving train, “we all hang on together.”