STORIES WITH NO WORDS.

Byline: Rob Lowman Entertainment Editor

Look at any picture on this page. Don't read the caption first. What do you see?

It's not a trick question. In many ways, it goes to the heart of two exhibits that revolve around the work of American photographer Walker Evans (1903-1975) now on display at the J. Paul Getty Museum.

``Walker Evans & Company: Works From the Museum of Modern Art'' examines the impact of Evans' work on other photographers and artists, while ``The American Tradition & Walker Evans: Photographs From the Getty Collection'' shows how photographers working before and during Evans' time defined their American subjects. Between the two exhibitions, there are more than 350 works by 100 artists covering the past 150 years.

Undoubtedly, you know Evans' work, particularly those unflinching photos of sharecroppers in rural America in the '30s, now considered telling documents of the Great Depression. The photos also scream Evans' artistic philosophy.

``The real thing that I'm talking about has purity and a certain severity, rigor, or simplicity, directness, clarity, and it is without artistic pretension in a self-conscious sense of the word,'' Evans once wrote about his photographs.

``Documentarian is the only good term to use,'' says Weston Naef, curator of the Getty's department of photographs, when describing the photographer. But as Naef will quickly note, Evans' vision of his work was more complicated than that.

First of all, Evans had plans to be a writer, a literary light, traveling to Europe with the intention of following in the footsteps of the great authors. But while there, he began taking photographs - tourist pictures. Somewhere along the way, though, Evans became obsessed with the process of ``what the medium could do.''

So, in essence, the would-be writer came to photography as an amateur, then refined his work on his own, never really studying with anyone. ``Evans settled on his calling after falling in love with photography,'' says Naef, ``after realizing he had a particular talent for making pictures that were very good.''

But this set up a conflict within Evans. ``He was obsessed with what words can do vs. what pictures can do,'' says Naef. ``Finally, he came down on the side of pictures.''

Still, the battle continued within Evans, says Naef, ``between what there is to be said about a picture and what a picture says for itself.''

As you walk into ``Walker Evans & Company,'' you are greeted with a series of eight photographs. They represent what the curators at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City - where the exhibit originated - saw as eight aspects of Evans' work: photos about the past, the present, people, home, signs, the impact of the movie culture, the facade and, finally, types/the individual.

There is very little text accompanying the photos. Museum-goers are asked to find their own connection between Evans' work and the other photos and paintings in an exhibition.

For instance, Evans' 1936 portrait of an austere-looking ``American Legionnaire'' is not far from German photographer August Sandler's 1928 picture of a relaxed-looking ``Unemployed Sailor.''

What do you see? Rather than filter you through on some sort of museum theme-park ride where everything is explained to you, the exhibition lets you wander, making your own associations.

As you do, Evans' impact on the arts is also implied in surprising ways. In the section devoted to signs and symbols, his 1936 ``Penny Picture Display,'' showing the window of a photo studio in Savannah, Ga., with hundreds of small head shots of people with the word ``STUDIO'' on the glass in front of them, sits near Andy Warhol's famed 1962 painting ``Campbell Soup Cans.'' Steps away on the floor is Felix Gonzalez-Torres' 1990 ``Untitled (Death by Gun).'' It looks like a giant poster-size memo pad with faces of murder victims. (The pages are meant to be torn off and kept.)

Meanwhile, Evans' 1930 ``Torn Movie Poster'' is a few feet away from Warhol's ``Gold Marilyn Monroe,'' and 1929 ``Girl in Fulton Street'' occupies a place near Edward Hopper's 1939 ``New York Movie'' and pop artist Roy Lichtenstein's 1962 ``Drowning Girl.''

Downstairs at ``The American Tradition & Walker Evans,'' Naef and the Getty took a different approach, putting Evans' work in a more historical context. There, his work is alongside photos from those who preceded him and followed him, along with some of his famous contemporaries like Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen, both of whose styles he rejected - the first for his artiness, and the latter for his commercialism.

But here, again, the museum-goer is encouraged to decide for himself, something Evans would likely applaud. ``The matter of art in photography may come down to this,'' he wrote in 1961. ``It is the capture and projection of the delights of seeing; it is the defining of observation full and felt.''

Both those aspects intersect in Evans' work, which is why the two exhibits spiral out so neatly from his visions, even if, as the photographer observed, ``Reality is not totally real.''

``A good photograph is often the miraculous combination of truth and beauty and something we can call fiction,'' notes Naef. ``Even Evans - as truthful and objective as his style and approach was - created beautiful pictures that were beautiful because of their truthfulness.''

But that's for you to see.

``WALKER EVANS & COMPANY: WORKS FROM THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART'' and ``THE AMERICAN TRADITION & WALKER EVANS: PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE GETTY COLLECTION'' Where: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1200 Getty Center Drive, Brentwood.

When: ``Walker Evans & Company'' through Sept. 16. ``The American Tradition & Walker Evans'' through Oct. 28.

Tickets: Open Tuesday through Sunday. Parking $5. Reservations required for weekday parking. Call [phone].

CAPTION(S):

6 photos

Photo:

(1) Walker Evans strove for clarity in his photographs. His bracing views of rural life, such as ``Bud Fields and his Family'' (1936), remain evocative reminders of the Great Depression.

(2) ``Penny Picture Display'' (1936), taken outside a photo studio in Savannah, Ga., is thought to have influenced Andy Warhol.

(3) Visitors to ``Walker Evans & Company,'' one of two exhibitions at the Getty Museum related to Evans, will see the photographer's works and those of the artists he inspired.

(4) Evans, whose ``Torn Movie Poster'' (1930) is featured at the Getty exhibit, originally wanted to be a writer.

(5) Workers at the Getty install the ``Walker Evans & Company'' exhibit, which continues until Sept. 16.

(6) Curators divided ``Walker Evans & Company'' into eight sections, each representing an aspect of Evans' work _ such as the Getty's installation of the ``Home'' theme.