Night Spot, Marion, Alabama

William Christenberry was one of the early practitioners of color photography as an art form. He became known for evocative yet spare pictures of signs, storefronts, and churches in Hale County, Alabama, where he has family and has visited since a child. This sun-drenched photograph captures the brightly colored exterior of a local watering hole in daylight. Christenberry’s mentor, Walker Evans—who himself made famous pictures of Hale County during the Great Depression—said of Christenberry’s photographs: “They seem to write a new little social and architectural history about one regional America (the deep South). In addition to that, each one is a poem.”