It's exactly how a city should be. The whole production is handsomely introduced by novelist Larry Brown, with his own recollections of the place and time, and edited by Tom Rankin. Bowed black women drag long white bags behind them as they gather cotton boll by boll. Prisoners in striped uniforms walk the fields behind mule teams. A grizzled old white man holds a hound pup in hands turned as rough as work gloves by a lifetime of hard labor.
Chickens wander the packed dirt yards, and lost-looking children stare at the camera.
Dain's work is a fine example of how the arts speak across all boundaries. He was born in Boston, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants. Yet from youth he was drawn to the writings of William Faulkner. Even without his comments, his photos demonstrate why. They range from the sublime to the ridiculous, from Peter Ustinov as an oily Nero to Boris Karloff as a dyspeptic Seneca chief.