Nelson Evans represents a coming together of 3 of my interests: movies, photography, and local history. As demonstrated in John Kobal's 1985 book Hollywood: The Years of Innocence, Evans helped to document the early years of the movie industry in Los Angeles. His death in 1922 at the age of only 33 makes one wonder how he would have captured and interpreted the coming height of the Jazz Age. What he has left us with is a body of work that ranges from simple settings to magical tableaux. The photographer in me is fascinated by his sometimes unusual use of light and pre-Photoshop manipulation of the image.
All that is well and good, but I find Evans' contemporaries Albert Witzel and Walter Seeley, among others, to be equaling interesting as photographers. What sets Evans apart for me is that he grew up just a mile from where I live (the Columbus, Ohio neighborhood of Clintonville). Although his family was known to local historians, Nelson's life story was not. And so I've spent much of the last year gathering as much information as possible to piece together what I can about the short life of Nelson Evans. With this blog, I hope to highlight what I have discovered and share it with others who might be interested. Since I have no interest in writing a biography, this seems to be the best way to get this information out there. My posts will include biographical info and photos from my collection, hopefully at a rate of one a week. Enjoy!
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