Minneapolis Institute of Art

Allie Mae Burroughs, Wife of a Cotton Sharecropper, Hale County, Alabama

Walker Evans

Date: 1936
Medium: Gelatin silver print
Department: Arts of the Americas
Institution: Minneapolis Institute of Art

Walker Evans, along with U.S. journalist James Agee, stayed with the Burroughs family in their four-room house while photographing Hale County, Alabama as part of a documentary project for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). The photograph features Allie Mae Burroughs, the matriarch of the Burroughs family with solemn eyes and furrowed brow. Her expression, combined with a simple dress and the unpainted siding of the building behind her partially conveys the struggle of rural families during the Great Depression (1929-39). This photograph was published in Evans and Agee’s book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941). United States, Americas

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