This documentary work on the cotton sharecroppers of Alabama began as an article for Fortune magazine but was rejected because Agee refused to adopt the sterile, objective voice of conventional journalism. The resulting book, published in 1941 with photos by Walker Evans, ultimately reveals as much about Agee as it did about his subjects. It also served as a new model for this sort of nonfiction writing, presenting full and reverent portraits of three families in every aspect of their lives, rather than recording mere social statistics.