Let Us Now Praise Famous Men is one of my favorite books. Written by James Agee and featuring photographs by Walker Evans, the book is the result of a journey into, and documentation of, sharecroppers in Alabama in 1936. The experience was overwhelming for Agee and he struggled with what he saw. On "beauty" he wrote, "Thus there are conveyed here two kinds of classicism, essentially different yet related and beautifully euphonious. These classicisms are created of economic need, of local availability and of local-primitive tradition: and in their purity they are the exclusive property and privilege of the people at the bottom of the world. To those who own and create it this beauty is, however irrelevant and undiscernible. It is best discernible to those who by economic advantages of training have only a shameful and thief's right to it..."
