I created two audio pieces to accompany a touring US exhibition of photography by Walker Evans.
Both pieces accompany the iconic photo, Alabama Cotton Tenant Farmer Wife, 1946 and were made as part of a SALT Documentary Institute course in 2021.
Here I am. Allie Mae Burroughs.
Allie Mae Burroughs was a cotton tenant farmer in Alabama, United States, in the Great Depression.
American documentary photographer Walker Evans, along with writer James Agee, went on assignment to document and photograph farmers and their families, like Allie Mae and her husband Floyd, in 1936.
Their photos and essays were published in the book, Let Us Praise Famous Men, and Evans’ photograph of Allie Mae Burroughs came to be one of the most iconic images of the Depression.
In this audio story, Allie Mae reclaims her story… and shares a few secrets.
Research, interview briefs, editing and editorial: Jane Curtis
Sound engineering: John Jacobs
Narrator: Sherre De Lys
It’s just how it was by Elizabeth Ogden
Elizabeth Ogden is a writer who lives just five miles, as the crows, from the Hale County Line, Alabama, where Allie Mae Burroughs lived in the Great Depression.
I asked Elizabeth these questions:
How do you feel about this photo?
What do you think your local community would think?
Tell us a story about your mother, as a daughter of sharecroppers in rural Alabama
and Elizabeth wrote and delivered this wry, thoughtful, heartfelt reflection on Allie Mae Burroughs’ life and photograph, and her connection to family and community in Alabama.
Writing and voice: Elizabeth Ogden
Recording and editing: Jane Curtis
Sound engineering: John Jacobs
Exhibition tour with audio
