Determining the final size for the best presentation of an image is one of the artist's major decisions. A quick look at Evans' work habits shows no reluctance to enlarge his images and no canon favoring only contact prints. He clearly negotiated the matter of size to fit the context and the subject.

As early as 1931 he was cutting 5 x 7 inch sections from larger negatives to allow making bigger prints with his friend, Berenice Abbott's enlarger. At FORTUNE he routinely ordered enlargements of many sizes and often ran images across two pages for a real graphic punch. In 1972 he supervised the production of a portfolio of his prints which were enlarged from 8 x 10 negatives. Also, his Polaroid work involved making 5 and 8 inch images from the 3 1/8 inch originals.

His most daring blow-ups were shown in his retrospectve at The Museum of Modern Art in 1971. There in cooperation with John Szarkowski, thirteen enlargements were made, each measuring approximately 6 x 8 feet. These served to punctuate the 200 smaller 8 x 10 inch contact prints and also to reveal access to the myriad of detail that Evans was so determined to collect.

The Evans images offered by MartsonHill Editions as 30 x 40 prints are:

Roadside Stand Near Birmingham, 1936

Post Office, Sprott, Alabama, 1936

Untitled, River Hill Cafe, Alabama, 1936

Houses and Billboards in Atlanta, 1936

At this size the pictures loose none of their original sharpness or rich tonality. A surprising amount of new information is available in these familiar images.