When Walker Evans was hired by Roosevelt's Resettlement Administration in 1935, he embarked on one of the most productive and creative periods in his career. He made several trips to the South, where he documented the lives of the rural poor as well as residents of cities, always drawn to vernacular artifacts of American society such as urban signs and roadside billboards. This direct, uninflected image powerfully contrasts the careworn look of the black man and the cheerful smiles of the huge white faces on the weathered movie poster behind him. It was probably shot with a right-angle viewfinder, which Evans sometimes used to take revealing pictures of people who were unaware they were being photographed.

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