Walker Evans took this photograph during a two-year documentary project in the American South commissioned by the US Department of Agriculture. The open brief of the project allowed him to explore his own interests in vernacular architecture and roadside signs, which he saw as the simple grammar of local life.

Here the forest of signs on the balcony provided Evans with a subject rich in graphic power and local significance. The contrasting messages chart the fortunes of the building, once the setting of a historic public speech, later the premises of a fish company and an art school. For Evans, such commonplace sites distilled an unconscious yet vital American style.