It was during its use as a parts warehouse that Walker Evans took his famous photograph of it in 1936, displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Hale County is connected to three major twentieth century artists: Walker Evans photographed the area in 1936 while he collaborated with James Agee on the 1941 book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.
SPR debuted in the Winston (now Camping World) West Series in a partnership with famous West Series owner Bill McAnally and famous racer Walker Evans.
The three families headed by Bud Fields, Floyd Burroughs and Frank Tingle, lived in the Hale County town of Akron, Alabama, and the owners of the land on which the families worked told them that Evans and Agee were "Soviet agents," although Allie Mae Burroughs, Floyd's wife, recalled during later interviews her discounting that information.
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It has organized exhibitions by 20th century masters including Alfred Stieglitz, Man Ray, Moholy-Nagy, El Lissitzky, Robert Frank and Walker Evans.
The exhibition included work by artists including Romare Bearden, Constantin Brâncuși, Renee Cox, Aaron Douglas, Walker Evans, Ellen Gallagher, David Hammons, Isaac Julien, Wifredo Lam, Ronald Moody, Wangechi Mutu, Chris Ofili, Uche Okeke, Pablo Picasso, Keith Piper, Tracey Rose and Kara Walker among others.
His exhibition debut in New York City was the critically acclaimed exhibition, “Contradictions in Black and White”, an exhibition that placed his work alongside Irving Penn, Margaret Bourke-White, Walker Evans and Ray K. Metzker in 2009.
Copland was inspired to write this opera after viewing the Depression-era photographs of Walker Evans and reading James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.
Exhibitions and catalogues he has curated and co-edited include Matter of Facts (Nantes et al., 1988), Une autre objectivité / Another Objectivity (London, 1988), Photo Kunst (Stuttgart, 1989), Craigie Horsfield (London, 1989), Lieux communs, figures singulières (Paris, 1991), Walker Evans and Dan Graham (Rotterdam, 1992) and Craigie Horsfield. La ciutat de la gent (Barcelona, 1996).