Frank Tengle, A Cotton Sharecropper, Hale County, Alabama / Fred Ricketts, Cotton Tenant Farmer

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, with text by James Agee and photographs by Walker Evans, was published in 1941. It focused on the lives of three cotton tenant farming families living in Hale County, Alabama. Frank Tengle, whom Agee called Fred Ricketts in the book, appears here in close-up, the deep, furrowed lines of his weathered face echoing the horizontal stripes of the clapboard siding on the shack against which he stands. He wears his work clothes; the stubble on his chin and oily disarray of his hair suggest that the photograph was made during or toward the end of Tengle's work day. The harsh sun against his face seems almost like an assault upon an already battered soul.