not the general in vietnam. they were the majors that were mumbling and grumbling and moaning like i was. c-span: the book is "about face: the odyssey of an american warrior" by david hackworth. thank you very much for your time. >> my pleasure. ..

in 1936, five years before they published famous men, james agee and photographer walter evans produced a article for "fortune magazine" titled "cotton tenants." it was about three poor families and alabama looking through the great depression.

the 30,000 word article and accompanying photos were never published by forging, but "cotton tenants" was discovered decades later in the collection of agee's manuscript at the university of tennessee. during this event hosted by the jimmycarterlibrary.org museum, editor john summers lead a panel discussion about the book and the workout james agee and walker evans. >> welcome to the jimmy carter presidential library here in atlanta georgia. i am thrilled to be moderating this illustrious panel tonight. and i think we will begin by introducing the book that we are going to be talking about, "cotton tenants." james agee, walter evans. after i introduced the book, i will introduce the guests and we will get started. and 1936, "fortune magazine," which was a relative babe among

business magazines and the country, sent one of its staff writers, james agee, to heal county in west central alabama with an assignment to tell the story is of the abject poverty and despair the lives of tenant farmers. agee, a tennessean by birth, educated at harvard, was bought 26, 27-years-old. known mostly as a poet, a film critic and a writer of screenplays, that he was also developing some talent as a long form journalist, a style that fortune editors like to come and he drew the assignment. at agee's request, fortune paired him with a documentary photographer agee barely knew, walter evans, whose previous work in the south had drawn good notice. the two of them spend two months in hale county with three

different families, and they produced, by magazine standards, a mammoth and powerful piece of work. a 90 page, 30,000 word manuscript and more than 50 images. for reasons that remain the subject of debate and speculation to this day, "fortune magazine" never in the manuscript. five years later, agee and evans, to use the current parlance "repressed the manuscript" into a 471 page book, "now let us praise famouse men." it was published by huton mifflin, five years after "fortune" turned down the manuscript. it didn't survive. it quickly went out of print after selling 600 copies.

it won some praise but it was criticized for its inconsistent voices, the cacophonous and clashing styles of presentation, longwinded stream of consciousness and indulgences. james agee died in 1955 at age 45 of a heart attack. he has been described as a alcohol like, a chain smoker, serial mary -- serial marrier -- sounds like a journalist. [laughter] by the time he had his happiest achievements come he won a pulitzer prize for his autobiographical book, "a def in the family pico he had been dead for three years. but there was life after death for "now let us praise famouse men." nearly 20 years after it failed

to ignite, in 1960, it was courageously i might say we published to a much different reception. the book hit american readers differently this time. it caught on and became an iconic mainstay in the book bag of college students all across the country. but the original manuscript had remained unpublished. resided in greenwich village in a basement, and agee evans papers for years until his daughter donated the papers to the university of tennessee. the manuscript is now published by melville house in conjunction with "the baffler" magazine. "the baffler" ran an excerpt in the last several months. it's on sale here later. i'm going to stop there. i'm going to introduce our guests who will tell you the rest of the story, and we will try to save some time at the end for your questions. first of all, john summers.

john is the editor of "cotton tenants" coming and we owe him a great deal of gratitude for the presence of the book today. "the baffler" magazine as a print and a digital journal of art and criticism now in its 25th year. john and "the baffler" foundation purchased the magazine to years ago, and he runs it from cambridge, massachusetts. john has a ph.d. and intellectual history from the university of rochester and is the editor of three books of cultural criticism. he was born and raised in gettysburg, pennsylvania on the mason-dixon line. just to show you how he has some geographical confusion, he claims he is very much a southerner. [laughter] >> that is relative, you know, down here. okay. hugh dever this is assisted professor at piedmont college and the hearst georgia.

he's the author of "the making of james agee," from 2008 and the editor of a scholarly magazine "now let us praise famouse men" that will be coming out next week i believe. currently he's working on an addition of agee's letters. he got his bachelor's degree in jackson, which i can tell you having lived across the street from it is in the shadow of the home. his master's at the university of alabama and ph.d. at the university of tennessee, where the agee papers are housed. his course titles like a lot to sign up for his class is. southern literature and black and white is one. feaks is another and red necks and georgia crackers, the self and its representation from the bottom-up. [laughter] chip simone like so many of us is a [inaudible] from massachusetts who studied under the harry callahan at the

rhode island school of design, and he has been making photographs for more than five decades. two years ago the height museum here in atlanta brought special attention to chip's work and a show that exhibited 64 of his prints that captured watershed periods in his professional career. his transition, not only to digitally generated images, but also to color. you'll know why chip is here to discuss looker evans when i read you this, which he wrote "in a generation that learned of expressive photography in a very parochial way. serious photography was done in black and white. color was vulgar. a sheet of the image was dictated by the format of the camera as croping was not acceptable. i have a band and arbitrary rules like these and continue to open my mind to the potential of new technologies. after 35 years in the darkroom, i move into the digital realm.

digital technology not only changed the apparatus of the meeting them, but it transformed how i observed the digital world and profoundly changed how why express what i see." so these are our panelists, and we are going to start with john. i'd like to give you the first word here. i mean, let's talk a little bit about "fortune magazine" in the 1930's. it starts on the cusp of the depression. henry louis decides to keep it going, nonetheless. he had big ideas for a different kind of business journalism. and he's hiring people like james agee, archibald, dwight macdonald, margaret bourke-white. tell us about that period of time, and a few with a segue into "cotton tenants" and tell us about how -- >> sure to lead to the idea that he was treating himself so badly with respect because he was a

journalist because he was a poet is what he started out as. the of the interesting thing about that is the self perception as a journalist a lot of the people hired on to the staff of "fortune magazine" was founded in 1930, he announced the new magazine, the week of the stock market crash. many don't think of themselves as a journalist before or after they were let loose. lewis has this idea, he was on "time" magazine and he was a kind of -- the magazines were very important in the 20s as a way of kind of guiding the new college-educated opinions especially in the eerie as the digestive at this time in a slightly different demographic. the new yorkers often was founded at this time.

magazines and the louis stable that included timing of "fortune" and magazines in 1946 for the hybrid. louis himself could see the journalism as a kind of technique of simplification. he wanted to provide breast summaries of the news for his audiences and very busy middle class is, the upwardly moving metal class's that we don't see much evidence of that today anywhere. he dealt specifically with an effort to reach business executives and managers. you have to remember when you think about some 95 journalism in this period in the 40's that the people he was writing for, they were business people to be there were 100,000 of them by 1935. the subscription numbers were

really good. it was a successful magazine ads for most things that he put his hand to. so, you know, agee can't "fortune magazine" right out of harvard. he graduated and, it must have been made or june of 1932. then in the summer he got his job at the strength of recommendation from his friend, dwight macdonald. he was a kind of literary chum. he became the champion of the work as a matter of fact when, as you mentioned, as they followed into such neglect. so, you know, agee made his adjustment as people like archibald made his adjustments and mcdonald did as well. but what happened at "fortune", write about 1932, 33, 34, and really extending into 1936 was henry luce, who was unusual in one respect in that he believed that business in america should

serve some point. there should be an end to business. it didn't necessarily have to have a social end but there should be a point to it would automatically distinguishes him from most of our business spokesman today. he caddied kind of enlightenment sense of what journalism could be like spinach he didn't mind criticism? >> let's face it, 1933-34, it's kind of hard to defend business. he had a henry hoover conception of business, but in the midst of the great depression, in the early part of the brunt of the depression and was almost impossible for any honest person to take that line conceived in the 1920's. succumb "fortune" and its writers, including agee, began to confront some of the signs of the country. so they ran pieces about the industry, for example.

they ran a piece about the tennessee valley authority, which agee wrote and which henry luce told him i was among the best things that had been printed and a couple years "fortune" had been around. so they were probably and pragmatically open to the new deal reforms. and i keep mentioning burt mcdonough because he had an interesting point of entry into the agee biography but it is important. but mcdonald ran a three or four part series on the u.s. deal in 1936 for fortune, and was the subject of a great deal of controversy around the office with luce. the fed plenty of profiles and the had invented this portrait profile. the corporations, business executives in the 20's and in the 30's they didn't want anybody to particularly know what they were doing. it's just it was a kind of path system that had been that way

and they didn't want anybody looking even a friendly person even the luce editors would run a long and in-depth profile and then they would show the subject of a profile and the draft and present them with we are going to run this. so that's how they got that off the ground. but the profile that macdonald was riding was a little hard hitting. you try to put an epigraph on the fourth installment by less n there was a little too far. it is changing by the time agee was in the office politics, you might say. by the time agee gets an assignment in the summer of 1936 to the and the gist is that by the time he starts writing it that all, there was a long fallout over the next 18 months at the magazine. so, they aren't quite sure that we have a circumstantial idea.

>> he comes from a political viewpoint, you can feel that as he is writing it. i'd like you to tell us -- show us the poet and james agee come if you would come into a little reading here. set it up any way you would like. >> sure. i will read a little from the beginning. where agee talks about what it is he is doing. i would say it is not quite -- welcoming you can judge for yourself. we will talk about this in the q&a. but i would say it isn't quite a political viewpoint. but passage i'm about to read is definitely the morrill charter you might say of the rest. agee says -- this is in the introduction. the civilization for which any reason puts a human life at a disadvantage. the civilization which can exist only by putting a human life at a disadvantage is for the neither of the name, nor of the continuance. and the human beings nurtured in an advantage which is a crude from the disadvantage of other

human beings pivoted and prefers that this would remain as it is in the human being by definition only. having much more in common with the bed bug, the tapeworm, the cancer and the scavengers of the deep sea. and here is what follows in the instruction to you, the readers. only if we hold such truths to be self-evident and inescapable and quite possibly more serious and quite certainly more immediate than any others, may be in any honesty and appropriateness proceed to the story, which is a brief account of what happened to the human life, and what human life can and no essentials way escapes under the certain unfavorable circumstances. the circumstances out of which it enters "cotton tenants" as bourn. and under the study reading of which he stands up into his distorted shape. and beneath the reach of which he declines in to death. the fact that his circumstances

are merely a local specialization of the huge and ancient and all but racial circumstances of poverty. the lives are continuously and entirely consumed into the effort, nearly and barely able to sustain itself. so probably deprived and the harm they have atrophied in the courses of that effort. though it can be called life at all the biological courtesy. this fact should not confuse and indeed can only sharpen our defendant. we would be dishonest for instance to cure ourselves with a thought that is in the reading the status of "cotton tenants" alone in committing the central problem, whatever would be solved. and we would be fools to comfort ourselves with the reflection that the south is a backward country. our story, however, is limited. we would tell you only of the three living families, chosen with all possible care and folly to represent a million and a quarter families cut the 8.5-9000000 human beings who are

the cotton tenants of the former belt. the field with his brother-in-law and have a brother-in-law the list called hill county in west central alabama giving it he worked for the brothers and partners and christopher who live in albertville, a small town, red clay and five highway miles north of them. he worked for central powers, a couple miles south of man fell. we shall begin with an outline of the business arrangements between the tenants and the land owner, fletcher powers, or by their wife and four children. that is the end of the introduction. >> see you get a flavor of his writing style. i want to turn to you, hugh coming and if he would come in you know as much about james

agee has anyone now. tell us whom he was kidding and not that he himself had conflict about doing this coming and about exposing these people to sort of national criticisms or national, and you know, approval, whenever there would be. one of the things agee was trying with "now let us praise famouse men" is the idea that rural poverty had become if people in the world poverty would become poster children for the depression, and looker "cotton evans in the administration to take pictures and propagandistic pictures of people and then go back and show them happy after the new deal had. they are representing people like allen as poster children for the depression.

when he went to the south in 1936, his first inclination is actually to do a piece on union organizing in the south. he's getting the assignment, which he knows is pretty important immediately at "fortune." he writes i was intensely interested to learn all i could about the union especially the street communist sharecropper's union and here was my chance on that, too. where do they help him get all this stuff. to be pieces, the first is the family of the second general last piece, an analysis of the situation and that the economics and all of the government will efforts to do something about it, which rather i was quite sure i could beautifully hang themselves on the world and a street union peace started with an inch by inch process with a couple organizers opening right on through the night writing etc

into the history of both unions. and so, from the very beginning cup first person he called after receiving the assignment was beth mchenry who was a communist organizer who had worked for the international labor defense on the scottsboro case in alabama, and she put him in touch with some communist organizers and the city and in "now let us praise famouse men" he writes actually he met with him several times. people who work, quote, spies and enemies. that's who he's talking about. his first night he went to the county where all sharecroppers unions had been founded to hear a speech by the conrad. so when he went to the south he was in the context of the communist party organizing. now over the next five years,

his attitudes towards communism and the communist party changed. but, you know coming you can see that conflict in the epigraph to "now let us praise famouse men," which begins with a quote from the king juxtaposed a quote from the communist manifesto. but the fact that the communist manifesto reads quote code these words are here to mislead those will be misled by then." so with agee and you always get the kind of point and the conflict which is right there on the page. >> are you saying that the families are merely actors in a plea that he is trying to write for the purpose of advancing the cause? >> welcome of the cause is maybe not the right word because agee himself would be hard-pressed to say what is it exactly that he's advancing?

he thought if he published this article in fortune that he would be striking a blow against the stuff which that which of course fortune was part of the establishment and a big part of the reason why they didn't publish it. but he saw himself as a spy recruited by the communist party. and even though he agreed with the goals coming he declined because he felt like as a writer he could either right or he could be a revolutionary. and he couldn't come at foley bombing the south when he had things to write. so the cause is complicated. >> let's talk about walker's e ten. but tradition did he come out of come emerge from as a photographer and what do we know about him at the time that he and agee are connecting?

>> he was a well educated and sophisticated man. he came out of the middle west and went to harvard and then from harvard, he went to paris, to the school of paris. and by the school of paris meeting all of the lessons paris has a place and experience can teach you. he liked to read the western classical poets but was also exposed and he knows the visual world was changing and that time that modernism had begun to happen to be he was very susceptible to that. so he was exposed to a certain kind of new aesthetic which ultimately was reflected in the way it was the true modern art methodologies machine need

picture would readily eliminate his presence from the image or at least people who fought that and that is a part of the objective was to make a picture that was so pure and it's descriptive powers that you were not distracted by the presence and the ego. now of course i think that that is in and of itself deceptive because his artistry was actually just there in plain sight. he knew how to keep his own shadow out of the pictures and to speak. he didn't see himself as a documentary photographer but he liked to work in the style of documentary photography. he felt that the camera couldn't possibly -- and i think that agee was an agreement with him, the canada couldn't possibly be so indifferent, so objective

because the things you point the camera at which is the skill of the photographer this is what makes the picture. it's not the process of photography that the process of selection of the subject and his pictures are fully realized. this wasn't always the case of course he did his first work in savannah. he had begun working through the south and by the time you get to the county he was already in released a year and he photographed tennessee and alabama and georgia and we'd be the command one of my favorite actors, but on my left come here on edge what avenue. i forget the title to it but it's a wonderful it had a black eye on that and it was

photographed in new orleans and savannah. he had a sense of what the south looked like to read and when i tried to gleaned from what else i read is how much time agee spent in the south if any to alabama where he had been here in total for almost two years. so a lot of the work you see from famous men. he felt like the things that he chose carefully to include in the photographs had their own almost spiritual power to them and that by choosing and selecting the images carefully, they transcended the subjects and the were elevated to the high year level of significance. >> give me a sense of the technology of the time.

what did the camera looks like? >> it would have been a hand-held camera and give you a - individual on the eight by 10-inch camera which was a real machine. was a chicago made camera so they are very warm and friendly actually of the mechanical device as a totem, and people were drawn to it, not threatened by it. his pictures were the leverett and the work that he did was very studied. as it turns out he collected

postcards and so there has been some scuttlebutt in the recent years just to how much influence he had from photographs of places that other people had taken and studied for all of his childhood, and we don't know how that ends or detract from his representation. he had an affinity on the element of the object he felt was reflected of the culture the was present in any given environment. they didn't want to know the economics attrition of the political situation. >> one thing i am curious about, and you should also feel free to china on this, we heard through the point of view or the angle that james agee was coming from and presenting the families was

he trying to reflect what he saw or was he serving as a provocateur? he was trying with what he saw. it is inherently formalizing and a the leverett process. it comes as a sort of soft collapse object. in the process of doing that you have to make certain decisions as to where to place it in composing images to read it is inherently in the architecture will reduce. they were photographed as the la petite as they may have been frequently structural integrity at least gravitas to the object. i think he treated people primarily the same way.

not with exactly the same kind of treatment if you go back to one of his hero's the french photographer that evans talks about in his indebtedness to that and also other american photographers that worked at the format on the direct work on a pretentious kind of work making the place of the emphasis and the strength of the subject itself. >> john, i'm curious, did you feel like there was a sort of perfect harmony between their writing and the photography or that they work as contrast to get their? >> the other model that we had was that for the groups arranged differently here.

we didn't try in this edition to achieve the same kind harmony. perhaps we are not sure what would have happened if it would have been published as a magazine article how they would have been estranged and whether they would have had captions and so on and so we are working slightly in the dark in producing this book. understand that they do and i appreciate it's not something we should do in this book. >> let's talk about agee's writing style. out of the period that he was writing, why it didn't resonate for americans when it came out in 1941 but did 20 years later. what would you say? >> the writing is -- when looking at the different typescript first, it was apparent that it was

recognizably james agee because it was -- if you have read any agee you have a sense of his pos and that sort of crabs you. it makes you feel grateful and even a sense of love for the author but it is a fairly wide experience with agee once you find the right wing the century it was the versatility. he really was able to write for the formal structures and proven master in place whether it was poetry and journalism. it was a magazine article, 30,000 words were bringing it forward to you.

when i first read it the first thing i thought it's fully realized journalism. i don't think he thought of himself as a journalist but it wasn't among the most important. the book shows he was a master of magazine journalism would you let us now praise famous men is an extended adaptation or much much more? >> i did say it is much, much more. anything and "cotton tenants" made its way into "now let us praise famouse men". but what is missing are the meditations on everything under the sun.

agee said it is only the nominal subject of "now let us praise famouse men." the real subject is certain normal predicaments of human defend the is what he is trying to capture it goes through all sorts of permutations. >> i do want to come back to the sharecroppers which is certainly true. you can tell that she knows how she is being represented. and you can tell that she has bad teeth even though her mouth is not open because -- and it hurts for her to become the poster child for poverty. but one thing that is interesting is that agee, for all of his half of the sharecroppers they never really let them speak for themselves.

they are even given that their own voice. similarly, evans has the photograph the first day they were there. they heard about it and they went on, believe it, put on their best clothes and came over to have their portraits taken. there's a very nice portrait of the family where there here is all, come the or queen, wearing my clothes come smiling and standing there. it's a nice standard family portrait. that portrait is not in "now let us praise famouse men." they wanted to be represented as a happy family. he writes about the attempt to make the house sort of have this middle class decency. and, you know, there was denied. they denied them and "now let us praise famouse men." so one of the tensions in that bookb representation

that agee knows is flawed and the human beings behind. spinet may not have been that however. it may have been the artifice. they were unaccustomed to being photographs. today people rehearse their poses. you know that if you have a facebook page. in those days being photographed some uncommon experience. a wonderful photographer who was an by eli head of studio was one of the most stunningly beautiful ordinary photographs of community people who didn't seem to have a sense of what was happening. they just stood there and presented themselves to the cannot evade and i think people like evans would have preferred that interaction. >> i have one question that

baffles me. in a "now let us praise famouse men," when walker evans crites the forward or the introduction about james agee and the one thing he says in new york publisher agreed to publish the expanded version of the manuscript. on the condition that certain words be deleted which are illegal in massachusetts, and i am thinking what possible words could have been illegal in massachusetts were it not illegal anywhere else. do you know anything about that? >> even then i would have thought. >> let me go back to que. how do you explain "now let us

praise famouse men" just didn't catch on the first time >> for one thing was published in august of 1941. they had depression fatigue by that point. the administration the photographs had been published and people were sickened at and they couldn't see it anymore and that is what part of it is is letting you see these people again for the first time. the other problem of course is that world war ii -- in december of 1941 when america was in world war i, world war ii, nobody cared about it anymore. >> in 1960 as you sit in the introduction when agee died in 1955, death and the family was

1957 and won the pulitzer and 58. agee had a resurgence of interest. the reviews were published and "now let us praise famouse men" was reissued and in 1962, so suddenly he became -- he was getting a lot of attention. what's interesting about agee is he was just as famous for what he didn't write because he was seen as an artist that field to produce the work expected but people took that sign of failure and said the reason he failed to produce what was expected of him is because they didn't compromise his principles and he had to much integrity about the system. people saw him as a sort of noble failure but as one critic of the time put it, he was

without armor, so i think especially young people that read "now let us praise famouse men" in the early 60's were drawn to that idea of integrity living with a compromise. i have a quote here from pc from the student not violating coordinating committee in the freedom of summer in 1953 and this is what she wrote about. i carry this book around. it's the same size as my old bottle bible which is a replacement. we replaced a turnaround like wine. it was the kind of bible for the freedom riders who came to register. and part of it was that it offered them a window into the mind of the south.

it's about the same people that were trying to lynch them in mississippi and part of it is that the college students wanted to understand these people not as abstractions or enemies, but as human beings. and that is exactly what agee accomplished as. the other thing i thought that they were drawn to is it showed them how to live without armor. it showed them how to live according to the principles without compromise. i teach "now let us praise famouse men" because there are a couple every semester who did it it is ebook either you can't get past the first few pages were it changes your life. i think in the early sixties there were people who wanted that change and "now let us

praise famouse men" really spoke to that. >> the reputation the book itself in the commercial and the reputation he did live in new york and he had friends and some of them talk to him of the new york intellectual figures in the 40's and 50's that were aware of what he had accomplished and kept in some small way the reputation. in fact in 1944, macdonald published or made available backstop from "now let us praise famouse men" from the magazine called politics so there was a small flame and that period that connects the struggle in the 30's and the 40's. >> i want to go to the audience. if you would raise your hand and we will have the microphone come

to you. don't be shy. i know you all have questions. while waiting for someone to raise their hand, i just want to mention if you have an interest in this and you clearly do, you wouldn't be here, it is worth noting we are about to see a major resurgence or at least an opportunity for there to be a major resurgence of benchrest there is a whole slew of other books coming out and i write about that? >> there is an 11 volume scholarship of the works and a death in the family has just come out in 2007 to read the complete journalism will be published this fall. my edition of "now let us praise famouse men" is coming out in the spring and it will win clued

the 1941 hagee and photograph and the 1960 photograph and about 600 pages of manuscript material including the unpublished chapters and graphs and out lines a and a version of "cotton tenants" including the two letters through the original sharecroppers to finally have their voice. the volumes of screenplays and the the original script and movie reviews, short fiction, poetry and letters. so the next few years there will be ample opportunity to immerse yourself in the lives. any questions here? over here, sir. if you don't mind. tell us the current state of the

families are aware of the book is out. are you aware the manuscript is out? >> i think the profession -- provision about the book, yeah. as a nuclear pleased that it is out and brought about honor to the family, even while describing the very difficult circumstances in which they live. yes, over here. >> i would like to make a brief statement before the question. i live from 1936 to 1941 on a 125-acre farm come off the miles east of the estate's. we had a black tenant farmer and all summer long my brother, one year younger, and i worked with of this black tenant farmer and on weekends and sometimes after

school we raised horses, two horses, and you'll, cowles, pay does come and -- cows pigs, goats, we didn't farm continent. my question is is there any research at all of the black tenant farmer? >> agee the was sent to find the representative family of white sharecroppers. in "now let us praise famouse men" the first chapter of the book the first two are about encounters with some bright sharecropper's brought in for

him and evans and then there's another one he goes to evans and they walk by and go to ask them who can let them in the church and when he approaches them from behind the run so the first couple of chapters in "now let us praise famouse men," agee is very aware of the fact that there are 6 million black sharecroppers in the south and he's not supposed to notice and so that is in their part of the structure and then in "cotton tenants," there is an appendix on the black sharecroppers. >> another is called landowners. so there are a few paragraphs. it's what he kind of calls and notes at random. so that's here. in the passage he says i think

about the destitute sharecropper's that don't have anything and the white sharecroppers take away the mule, the cow and pigs and then start talking. >> there was another question back here. >> you said that agee specifically asked for evans to go on the assignment with him even though he didn't know him very well. can you speak to why he might have wanted evans the content can you also speak to what the relationship became once they did speak to get there? >> evans was on assignment for the administration had that time >> he was borrowed from the ssa. so evans was working for fortune at that time.

unfortunately he had a dislike for people like margaret to for quite where he thought were to pretentious in the work that they did come and evans had already developed a reputation as being the forthright straight shooter literally working at a certain level of snapshooting. there was no attempt to manipulate the sentiment or things like that and so that is apparently a quality that he wouldn't despise. >> a regular photographer at "fortune." >> margaret bourke-white had the first photograph on the first issue of life magazine as a matter of fact as i recall. but that is what i came across. he didn't like that type of photography and he was aware evans didn't do it that way. he didn't really think of what

they did as the collaboration they both went there and they had their own thing to do and when famous men can run around they reached an accord at how it would be joined and as such, the first edition had 50 pages of photographs, one picture per page so the viewer had to work a little harder because there was no caption. but after going through these images in the very specific sequence because of was important to how his work was laid out and how the story unfolded so to speak. then when you go through to the end of the 50 images, you then can to the introduction of "famous men," said a salles famous but different roles and you have an emotional and visceral level of photographs.

and of course he would come back because they were eluted to in the riding to the people you were reading about and the house is your reading about pitting it is all that stuff, but first and foremost, they wanted you and your sense to write about the photographs. >> do we have another question? one over here. go ahead, sir. >> considering we just passed through an equal economic time as the great depression and hal brilliantly it was detected later on, we have not a migrant worker situation and all sorts of issues that relate to very similar situations. is there now -- and i will be brief, is agee working today? >> well, let's hope so to be a i think one of the things to hope

for from this book and from hugh's work and chip's work, cultivating the public for this role some of them remember the importance of doing this and they are certainly not the business part of it anymore. there seem to be many magazines left. bling back to henry luce to write and paid them and gave them offices. agee had an office in the chrysler building. there was a presumed audience for the work. the offices are gone, the audience is disorganized, and

their resources, the media magnets are chasing online now. they are not much interested in this. so, it is a jury good question. >> i might emphasize on that i think i failed to introduce myself earlier. i spent 36 years in the newspaper business and i now teaches journalism at emory. i wrote it up on the history of the deutsch deacons coverage in the south and that was just by way of getting you some bona fides to say that we are now in a state currently where news organizations are not by and large allowing reporters to do what we might call the merging journalism. but i am not despairing because i have seen where there's been an uptick in the on-line news organizations, some of them with newspaper based and some of them or not, that were increasingly

interested in long form journalism and increasingly informed emerging journalism. but if you say so how are we covering the state of the immigrant in america today, i would say that we are covering the politics very well. we sort of know what is going on in the senate subcommittee of the judiciary committee and do we know what is going on in their lives, are we living with them and telling their stories the answer is no pity if i think it is a national problem and it's not just down here. but we don't see reporters in the fields of trade. we don't see them at a teenager that is scared to death he or she will get stopped and without a proper driver's licence. we don't see them suddenly taxing their parents be careful i got caught on a traffic

violation the media after you. we don't see that. i am hopeful that we will get back to that. i think that online has multiple opportunities for deep reporting. and i look forward to seeing more of that. >> who is interested in reading about poor people whacks. in 1946 on the agee, but i know of a product in washington that is trying to cultivate reporters and reporting the social crisis that's right now and the entire country and then to try to keep the sleaze and give them a place in what major media and the reports that come back from the editors from the major media are almost universally. but can you take the poverty out? >> it is a little bit uncomfortable. it's important to remember this is a book about poor people. >> we have another question over here.

>> full disclosure. my grandparents are sharecroppers and alabama and mississippi and my parents were sharecroppers and mississippi in the forties and fifties. i'm interested in the finding of the article. was it the article or was it pos and photography whacks. it was the photography. that's one question. and then my other question was agee alone given the assignment and then selected a photographer and instructed him and once they were on the job in alabama to that collaborate specifically about what they wanted photographed?

>> it was a collaboration. eddy want to elaborate? >> i think they worked separately. >> they chose to live with the families. he was more interested in keeping a distance. he thought it was important to do that kind of work and he was somewhat of a reserve a guy as i understanding, less likely to be in the trenches and his career as an artist which was foremost in his mind because two years after the photograph was made in alabama, 1936, evans was the first photographer ever to have a one person short in the museum of modern art in new york and the was in 1938 which included some of the county photographs.