A cyclist and a Walker.

On a gentle Sunday afternoon cycle in the London summer drizzle today, I stumbled (so to speak) across a small-but-perfectly formed art allery in a local park. To one side of Pitzhanger-Manor House is the PM Gallery, and since yesterday this peaceful space has been home to the Hayward's touring exhibition entitled Walker Evans: Photographs 1935-36. "Walker Evans", states the exhibition guide, "endures as one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century. ... [He] had the extraordinary ability to see the present as if it were already the past. ... His principal subject was the American vernacular, as found in roadside stalls, cheap cafés, advertisements, simple bedrooms, and in small town main streets." Hung on four white walls, the black and white photos of churches, people, streets, roof-tops and the evidence of daily life speak simply, directly and honestly to the viewer. But at the same time this documentary style of photography - seemingly a simple recording of facts - is carried out with such artistic finesse that the images are imbued with an enigmatic quality making them quite mesmerising. A modern day Mona Lisa, suggests one of the information panels of the image lablled "Allie Mae Burroughs, Wife of a Cotton Sharecropper, Hale County, Alabama".