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Floyd and Lucille Burroughs, Hale County, Alabama

Creator

American Photographer · 1903–1975

MakerAuthorArtist

> Leaving aside the mysteries and the inequities of human talent, brains, taste, and reputations, the matter of art in photography may come down to this: it is the capture and projection of the delights of seeing; it is the defining of observation full and felt. > > -- Walker Evans Walker Evans began to photograph in the late 1920s, making snapshots during a European trip. Upon his return to New Y

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Date: 1936
Medium: Gelatin silver print
Culture: American
Department: Photographs
Institution: Getty Museum

Walker Evans captured this informal image of Floyd Burroughs and his daughter Lucille at they sat on their porch in Hale County, Alabama. The man's tattered clothing and their lack of shoes demonstrate the family's economic struggle at the height of the Depression. During a month-long expedition, Evans and the writer James Agee documented the lives of three families of white Southern sharecroppers for an article in *Fortune* magazine. Evans photographed the interiors and exteriors of the families' homes, barns, and churches and made many portraits. Their work never appeared in *Fortune*, but the resulting book, *Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,*published in 1941, became a landmark of social journalism.

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