let us now praise famous men

...is the title of a book that i would like to read (one day in my lifetime...). i first came across it in about 1992 when i was at the UC library supposedly studying. i always ended up browsing in different isles to where i should have been researching!

it is a book based on a collaboration between journalist James Agee and photographer Walker Evans that began as an assignment from Fortune magazine to report on the lives of Alabama sharecroppers. the photographs are famous, in showing the conditions that the poorest of the poor lived in 1930's America. photography is a great record of life. i like seeing how different people live their day to day lives - whether it is another country, another "class" or another time in history.

These photographs are from Walker Evans documentation of 1930's sharecroppers.

i know my paternal grandmother lived through some harsh times as a child, with a WWI veteran father who caught rabbits as a living. but i was never able to glean much information from her about her childhood. maybe that's why i am so interested in photographs and stories like this. i try to imagine life for my grandmother as she grew up. these are some pictures of her brothers and sisters.