The influence of August Sander and Paul Strand’s portraits is evident in many of Evans’ photographs, for example in Faces, Pennsylvania Town (Johnstown) which depicts two miners. This photograph was included in the exhibition Walker Evans:American Photographs hosted at MoMA in New York in 1938, the institution’s first one-person photography exhibition. Thanks to this landmark exhibition, documentary photography became legitimized as an art form. Likewise, the photobook Evans published on the occasion of the exhibition has remained a relevant document depicting the consequences brought about by the Great Depression in the United States and has been re-published numerous times.

Although Faces, Pennsylvania Town (Johnstown) is dated 1936, it is believed that Evans made the picture in the fall of 1935, since, in the summer and autumn of that year, he had traveled to Pennsylvania’s industrial cities to photograph the hardships of the Great Depression as part of the Farm Security Administration commission. In order to complete the assignment he specifically chose a large format camera. However, this photograph was shot with 35 mm film, a format he would turn to for creating meticulous and precise portraits.