{"id":18214,"date":"2023-05-18T09:36:08","date_gmt":"2023-05-18T13:36:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/?page_id=18214"},"modified":"2023-06-06T09:52:33","modified_gmt":"2023-06-06T13:52:33","slug":"james-agee-biography","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/exhibitions\/james-agee-biography\/","title":{"rendered":"James Agee Biography"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-black-color has-text-color\">James Agee (American, 1909-1955)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Author James Agee was one of the preeminent film critics of the twentieth century. After growing up in Knoxville, Tennessee, Agee attended Harvard University and then worked at Fortune and Time. He is noted for his ability to critique films and plays in layman\u2019s terms rather than using convoluted terminology. Along with being a critic, he wrote several scripts and plays including The African Queen and The Night of the Hunter, as well as a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel A Death in the Family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He is photographed by his collaborator Walker Evans. They toured the South together for a project that became the book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941) in which they showcased impoverished tenant farmers during the Great Depression. Here Agee looks road-weary, as this intense close up shows him squinting from the bright southern sun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-default is-cropped wp-block-gallery-1 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/files\/2023\/05\/1984.5.9.webp\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"712\" height=\"900\" data-id=\"18215\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/files\/2023\/05\/1984.5.9-712x900.webp\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-18215\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/files\/2023\/05\/1984.5.9-712x900.webp 712w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/files\/2023\/05\/1984.5.9-237x300.webp 237w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/files\/2023\/05\/1984.5.9-768x970.webp 768w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/files\/2023\/05\/1984.5.9-1216x1536.webp 1216w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/files\/2023\/05\/1984.5.9-497x628.jpg 497w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/files\/2023\/05\/1984.5.9.webp 1519w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 712px) 100vw, 712px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Walker Evans, <em>Portrait of James Agee<\/em>, 1937, gelatin silver print mounted on board, 8 5\/8 x 6 7\/8 in., Bates College Museum of Art purchase with Dr. Robert A. and Minna F. Johnson &#8217;36 Art Acquisition Fund, 1984.5.9<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"10\" height=\"10\" data-id=\"14895\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/files\/2021\/01\/blank-image-2.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-14895\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"10\" height=\"10\" data-id=\"14895\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/files\/2021\/01\/blank-image-2.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-14895\"\/><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>James Agee (American, 1909-1955) Author James Agee was one of the preeminent&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1626,"featured_media":0,"parent":1152,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_dimp_site_id":"","_dimp_override_contact":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"class_list":["post-18214","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/18214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1626"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18214"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/18214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19111,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/18214\/revisions\/19111"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}