Jerry Cooke, Mal-o-Mars, photo.1948


"The picture is quiet and true. Since I am writing about photography let me point out that this picture is a better partof the story at hand than either a drawing or a painting would be. There is a profitable and well-run cracker firm in a sweaty part of the town, there is a knot of men talking on the pavement about anything but crackers, amidst the irrelevant trucks. This is where Mal-o-Mars are cooked and this is where last week's newspaper meets the gutter too. And the Strand Hotel becomes famous for flavour. My point is Fortune photographs should take a long look at a subject, get into it, and without shouting, tell a lot about it."

 

Walker Evans to Ralph Paine, 23.7.48 see Walker Evans at Work Photographs together with Documents Selected from Letters, Memoranda, Interviews and Notes, With an essay by Jerry L. Thompson, Thames and Hudson 1984. The photographer's son-in-law, Peter McGrath writes (28th October 2005), "The urban picture of his you show is coincidentally just a few blocks from where we (his daughter, 3 grandchildren and I) live in the far West Village in Manhattan. That photo is now our family computer desktop wallpaper... I have always described Jerry as a story teller in regards his pictures. He was really quite a great one in person as well."