Christenberry was inspired to examine the familiar terrain of his childhood after reading Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, photographer Walker Evans and writer James Agee’s lyrical study of the lives of Hale County tenant farmers in the throes of the Great Depression. The book, originally published in 1941, was re-issued in 1960 as Christenberry came of age as an artist. While he was taken with Evans’s direct and rational photographs, it was Agee’s evocative prose that caused him to consider the red clay roads and humble clapboard buildings of rural Alabama as a rich source of creative material.