Agee’s writing imparts a dignity not found in the photos taken by Walker in a near-apology. His writing is necessarily by nature a reaction to Walker’s photographs, as the photos represent the initial image one encounters upon meeting these families and individuals. Agee’s prose, then, supplements an exalted aura surrounding these people, functioning similarly to the *footnotes in Keene’s much more intimate description of Carmen. After all, the humanization of these subjects — ironically, often via his descriptions of them as angry and full of hatred given their wretched situations — cannot be communicated in the snapshots taken by Walker. The photos alone impart the sense of dreadful poverty and ramshackle disarray, displaying families for which the holes in their clothing are outnumbered only by their children, whom the viewers come to pity. None of the subjects are smiling — which would at least be a semblance of movement, contraction — imparting a further sense of suffocating stasis. Agee’s writing, however, reshapes the reader’s understanding of the subjects, imparting context to their situations — the sick steed, for example — redefining the depiction of the families from simply wretched (or even deserving of blame, for the seeming state of the children) to one of compassion and regret at the lot they’ve been served.  Agee subtly emphasizes the limited scope of the camera lens in his encounter with the African-American couple walking to church. He comments that he “had no doubt Walker would do what he wanted ‘whether he had permission or not, but I wanted to be on hand,” chasing after the couple and giving them quite a fright in the process. In his commentary on Walker’s disregard, Agee simultaneously comments on the role of photography — which unflinchingly depicts the surface value without requesting permission in the form of considerate contextual background or sympathetic retakes. However, Agee is unsparing in his depiction of himself as an utterly ignorant white man, given his lack of foresight in chasing after the couple and scaring them horribly. The role of a writer, he communicates, is not innocent either — although perhaps more well-mannered in its necessary communication with the subjects, it requires a surgical invasiveness that leaves its subjects marred in different ways than does photography.