Visual :

In this black and white image you can see a family standing on what looks like the front porch of their run-down home. By the tatty clothes they are wearing you can assume that they are a working class family and are struggling with poverty. You can see 5 members of the family standing there, each doing their own thing, with a dog hidden behind the legs of the young boy at the front. The windows of the house seen quite dirty and the wood looks old and damaged – their house doesn’t look well-looked after.

Contextual :

Walker Evans photographed 3 families who were struggling with poverty during his work on capturing the Great Depression in Hale County, Alabama. The people in this image above was one of those families. This family was one of the many who were struggling with living their daily lives due to the Great Depression. At the time of this image, it was the height of it. You can clearly see how the effects of the Great Depression are taking a toll on these families – they wouldn’t have been able to afford clean clothes, enough food or the right equipment to clean their windows or fix their deck.

Visual :

In this image you can see two women placed in the middle of a room which looks like the living room of a home. While they’re very different in appearance – one looks old, with wrinkles and grey hair, while the other looks youthful – they both look like they have a comfortable relationship sitting on the floor together both looking into the camera, as if they are family.

Contextual :

In her series ‘The Notion of Family’, Latoya Ruby looks at her family’s struggle with disease and poverty. She photographs three generations of her family – her grandmother, her own mother and herself – to portray their struggles.