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This famous photograph, by Walker Evans (1903-1975), is an icon of Depression-era misery. Walker Evans took the photo in the summer of 1936 while working for the Federal Farm Security Administration (FSA) and Resettlement Administration (RA) primarily in the Southern U.S. He and writer James Agee had been sent by Fortune magazine on an assignment to Hale County, Alabama for a story. While there, Evans and Agee stayed with three white sharecropper families headed by Bud Fields, Floyd Burroughs and, Frank Tingle. The magazine opted not to run their story and years later the two published a groundbreaking book entitled 'Let Us Now Praise Famous Men' that painted a deeply moving portrait of rural poverty. This portrait of Allie Mae Burroughs, the wife of Floyd Burroughs, was included in the book. Her expression tells the story of desperate poverty, destitution, and despair in the midst of the Great Depression. As it is today, it was also a difficult period in America's history.