Miners' Houses, Vicinity Birmingham, Alabama

1935

Walker Evans

(American, 1903–1975)

Culture

America

Medium

gelatin silver print

Measurements

Image: 12.8 x 21.8 cm (5 1/16 x 8 9/16 in.); Matted: 35.6 x 45.7 cm (14 x 18 in.)

Credit Line

John L. Severance Fund 1991.243

This artwork is known to be under copyright.

Location

Not on view

Description

In 1935 Evans, unemployed and broke, happily accepted work documenting rural and urban poverty for the Farm Security Administration. The modest homes of these miners were far more comfortable and had more conveniences, including electricity, than those of the sharecroppers he would photograph the following summer in Hale County, just 100 miles away. But some of the inhabitants were likely unemployed and receiving government assistance. The Depression ravaged coal mining and textile production, two of the state’s major industries, shuttering half of those companies by 1933. A year later, 40% of Birmingham residents were receiving some form of government aid.