The thirty photographs by Walker Evans in the Bell Gallery Collection present an abbreviated survey of the artist's work. The earliest images were taken in Cuba in 1933, to accompany Carlton Beals' text for "Crime of Cuba," which was published by Lippincott in the same year. Evan's clear-eyed approach and his ability to reveal the dignity within the lives of impoverished people was already in full force.

Nearly half the works in the collection are from Evans' work for Roy Stryker and the Farms Security Administration. In their employment from 1935 through 1938, Evans photographed primarily in the South Eastern states, as well as in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York City. Amongst the typical views of coal miners' homes and storefronts, is Untitled (harnessed horse). While the cropping deviates from Evans' use of overall views, the artist's interest in signage is clearly present.

Philosophical differences with Stryker caused Evans' departure from the New Deal organization in 1938. During the 1940s and 1950s, he photographed increasingly in urban environments, shooting in the streets and subways of New York. During this time he wrote for Time and wrote and photographed for Fortune magazine. His work appeared in Fortune through the mid-1960s.

Subway Portrait is one of a series of images taken covertly within the New York subways between 1938 and 1941. Evans rode the trains for hours with the lens of his camera peering from beneath the top button of his coat. Focusing on the bench across from him he shot "blind," with no control of lighting, angle of view, or precise framing. These personal (non-commissioned) works were included along with an introduction by James Agee in Many are Called, published in 1966. The latest works in the collection, such as Untitled (Maine) from 1962 and Kitchen Window, Nova Scotia, 1971, were taken in the homes and environments of his friends and family and are personal and autobiographical.

The images in the collection by Walker Evans were given to the Bell Gallery by Harry H. Lunn, Jr.