Floyd and Lucille Burroughs, Hale County, Alabama

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 Fortunemagazine. 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.