Cotton harvesters in truck--Arkansas 1955

Robert Frank made this photograph, *Cotton harvesters in truck--Arkansas*, sometime in the mid-twentieth century. Look at the way he's framed his subjects, all those bodies crammed into the back of a truck. I bet it was hot, dusty, and they were all exhausted. I like how Frank has captured a sense of quiet dignity amongst the workers. See how their eyes gaze out at something beyond the frame? Are they thinking about the fields they've just left, or the ones they'll be heading to tomorrow? It's not a glossy picture; it's grainy and real, like something Walker Evans might have done. Frank isn't trying to pretty things up; he's showing us what's there, unvarnished and true. It makes me think about the stories these people could tell, and all the labor, history, and lived experience embedded in those faces.