Jamie Nelson_Let us Now Praise Famous Men

"This is why the camera seems to me, next to unassisted and weaponless consciousness, the central instrument of our time and is why in turn I feel such rage at it's misuse: which has spread nearly universal a corruption of sight that I know of less than a dozen alive whose eyes I can trust even so much as my own" (9). This quote taken from James Agee and Walker Evans' book Let us now Praise Famous Men gives some insight as to what these two men were trying to accomplish; to document the lives of people who were struggling through the Great Depression. Some may argue that to some extent these two men exploited these families through their use of documentary photography and powerful written responses but what these two men accomplished through their combination of these two mediums was far greater then the exploitation of these poor families. In contrast, what Agee and Walker accomplished had to do not with the exploitation of these people, but rather to show the dignity that these people still possessed even when living in the worst of conditions.

Starting out the book with the landloard Chester Bowles looking like a baffon proves this. Evans depicts these people "boss" in such a light where all of the other characters of the story seem dignified. The homes of these people were kept clean; what little time they had apart from working in the fields these families tried to keep what humble possessions that they had clean and orderly. Their faces and bodies covered in dirt showed how long and painstakenly long these people were out in the field taking their job seriously. In one review, a comentator describs Evans photographs as follows "Evans' dis-interested approach to these families resulted in portraying them with dignity and strangth, although they lived in colete poverty. He sought to show the beauty of order and respectability within such an impoverished condition" (1).

Agee, Jamies, and Walker Evans. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: Three Tenant Families. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960. Print.

"Let Us Now Praise Famous Men." American Studies at The University of Virginia. Web. 13 Nov. 2010. http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ug97/fsa/letus.html