1930s Photography from the Collection of the Birmingham Museum of Art

This small exhibition features the work of Walker Evans, Arthur Rothstein, and Marion Post Wolcott, three photographers who documented the American South during the Great Depression. Images of hardship and hope exist together in photographs representing children in tattered clothes, underemployed young men playing midday checkers, and couples dancing on a Saturday night. Through this selection of photographs, the broader effects of the Great Depression on Alabama and the South are revealed. The photographs were made at the same time as Richard Coe’s Depression-era etchings, featured across the Bohorfoush Gallery in the exhibition Magic City Realism: Richard Coe’s Birmingham.

Featured image: Walker Evans (United States, 1903-1975), A child’s grave, Hale County, Alabama, gelatin silver print, Museum purchase with funds provided by Dr. and Mrs. David Sperling in honor of their friends Mr. and Mrs. Stanley Erdreich, Dr. and Mrs. Robert Walton, Mr. and Mrs. Edgar Marx, Mrs. Carvel Woodall, Ms. Anne Silberman, Dr. and Mrs. Emmett O. Templeton, Ms. Carole Simpson, Dr. and Mrs. Jimmie Harvey, Jr., Mr. John Whitworth, Mr. and Mrs. Harold Apolinsky, Dr. and Mrs. Robert T. Russell, and Mr. and Mrs. Stanley Lapidus