I Have Only Come Here Seeking Knowledge
Quotable: The American photographer Walker Evans on why we're put here.
Brief musings about storytelling each day (or as frequently as I can muster).
Aug. 9, 2026
CAPTAIN OBVIOUS IS who I’m going to be today, but hopefully for a useful purpose.
Walker Evans (1903-1975) was, is and always will be one of the greatest American photographers ever to press a shutter button. His captured moments of a bygone United States seem at once incredibly distant, as if another universe, and at the same time so very familiar. As with the best photographic images, you can gaze into them multiple times and notice something new with each successive view.
Evans was effective, I think for one reason above all others. He noticed things. He looked at everyday life and extracted meaning from what he saw, then photographed according to that meaning he found. That’s why his photos are worth not just seeing but revisiting. They fairly shout: Look and understand.
That’s why I have long appreciated this simple exhortation from him, which is highly useful if you’re a storyteller and equally so if you’re any kind of human being whatsoever.
“Die knowing something. You are not here long.”
I believe that if just a small percentage of the population chose to follow this mantra consciously and intentionally, we’d live in a better world — not to mention a far more interesting one.
And now, The Police.
To Ponder
How do you hone your “art of noticing”? Are there techniques you have to maintain and build these muscles?
Try looking at an Evans photo — any one, not just the one here — and then put it away. What do you remember from it? What lingers?
If you’re interested in reading about how everyday life and unusual things shape us, check out my other Substack, Unsorted but Significant:
