I was trying to find out if Belinda was related to Basil (apparently not), when I came across Belinda's previous book, which covers the period when she was writing the Walker Evans biography:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/23/garden/23guynd.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Sounds amusing; the Laird sounds a bit still enamored of his ex-wife. What did you think of the Evans book?
Rathbone's Evans bio reads well and provides a lot of information on the photographer's life. I'm going to read James Mellows'
Evans biography soon. It was written with the cooperation of the Evans estate - Rathbone didn't have all of the access that Mellow did - although Mellow died of a heart attack before the book was completed. So, in essence, it's 2/3rds of a biography.
Between the two biographies, I will probably know more than I want to about Walker Evans' life. I'm not much of a fan of artist biographies, but I made an exception here simply because Evans' photographs speak so strongly to me.