A photographic essay published as a Houghton Mifflin book in 1941, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men was a collaborative project by writer James Agee (1909-1955) and photographer Walker Evans (1903-1976), who were sent by Fortune magazine to document the lives of southern tenant farmers. While the book originated as one of many similar projects within the 1930s documentary tradition, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men has come to be seen as an enduring work of philosophy, cultural history, and autobiography, as well as being an acknowledged American literary classic.

In April of 1936, Fortune magazine, one of the most liberal magazines during the 1930s, asked Agee to contribute an article to its "Life and Circumstances" series about poor and lower-middle-class Americans. Agee was asked to write on the lives of white southern tenant-farm families and to include a photographic...