It is commonly held that the American South is our nation’s most culturally distinct region. Because it can so vividly record reality, photography has been the medium chosen by many artists to convey their unique impressions and experiences of the South. Works in the collection by Walker Evans, Marion Post Wolcott, Arthur Rothstein, and others document the conditions endured by rural southerners as the nation struggled through the Great Depression. Our nation’s Civil Rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s played out most notoriously in the Southeast. A number of photographs in the Museum’s collection by photographers including Chris McNair, Ernest C. Withers, James “Spider” Martin, and Charles Moore have forever fixed images of the era’s braveries and brutalities in the national consciousness. Beyond its travails, the Southeast can also evoke a sensual slowness and pride of place. Birney Imes’s color print, Freedom Village Juke, conjures this mood and flavor, as do a number of William Christenberry’s images of his beloved Hale County and environs.