The 23 photos in the Brooks Museum's exhibit, (Extra)Ordinary, were taken between 1935 and 1941. The photographers were dispatched to the South by the Farm Security Administration, an organization created by the New Deal to help farmers cope with the Great Depression.

Their assignment was to document the daily lives of Southerners so that the FSA could see how their money was being spent, if and how conditions were improving, and which people and areas were still in need.

The resulting black-and-white photographs depict a changing South and its people. There are portraits of young families, of children pointing toy guns, bank presidents and cotton brokers, little old ladies and lots of people sitting on ramshackle porches. All of the photos - even one of Front Street in Memphis - have a dusty, agrarian feel.

For many Americans, these were the first photos of the South that they had ever seen. Looking at these photos of a region caught between two time periods, it's unsurprising that this particular vision of the South has endured in the minds of people living elsewhere. They're powerful images - stark and real, with the photographers favoring content over composition.

The photos will be on display, along with a few works by William Eggleston and William Christenberry from the 1970s and 1980s, will be on display at the Brooks Museum of Art through April 10th.

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Brooks Museum of Art