You Have Seen Their Faces
Quick Summary
You Have Seen Their Faces is a 1937 book that combines text by Erskine Caldwell with photographs by Margaret Bourke-White. It is a powerful documentary work that offers a glimpse into the lives of the rural poor in the American South during the Great Depression.1
The book presents an unadorned look at the struggles and daily realities of sharecroppers and tenant farmers, mixing poignant images with Caldwell's characteristic prose. It is a significant work of social commentary, highlighting the hardships faced by a marginalized population.1
While Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee and Walker Evans, published in 1941, also documented the lives of Depression-era tenant farmers, You Have Seen Their Faces predates it and offers a unique collaboration between a writer and a photographer.12
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Margaret Bourke-White…collaborated on three illustrated books: You Have Seen Their Faces (1937), about Southern sharecroppers; North of the Danube (1939), about life in Czechoslovakia before the Nazi takeover; and Say, Is This the U.S.A. (1941), about the industrialization of the United States.
Read More…collaborated on three illustrated books: You Have Seen Their Faces (1937), about Southern sharecroppers; North of the Danube (1939), about life in Czechoslovakia before the Nazi takeover; and Say, Is This the U.S.A. (1941), about the industrialization of the United States.
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Erskine Caldwell…about the rural South entitled You Have Seen Their Faces (1937). They collaborated on two more such picture-and-text books on eastern European countries. Caldwell worked overseas as a journalist during World War II, wrote screenplays in Hollywood, and continued to produce works of fiction and remembrance in the latter part…
Read More…about the rural South entitled You Have Seen Their Faces (1937). They collaborated on two more such picture-and-text books on eastern European countries. Caldwell worked overseas as a journalist during World War II, wrote screenplays in Hollywood, and continued to produce works of fiction and remembrance in the latter part…
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