Gambling with their “Cotton Money” in Back of a Juke Joint

This photograph portrays a group of men engaged in a game of chance, although the game itself is not depicted. Only the sides of the men's faces and their fancy clothes are visible as they focus their attention outside the frame. The composition is tightly cropped and foreshortened, punctuated by a single bare light bulb in the upper left corner. The effect echoes the intensity of the gamblers, who watch as their meager fortunes fade and multiply. In the exact center of the image, a shiny quarter sticks out of one man's ear. It is a good luck charm, but it also symbolizes the irresistible call of money. On the back of the photograph, Post Wolcott wrote: "the quarter in ear, possibly for good luck? Yes." Marion Post Wolcott was one of a small group of photographers who worked for the Farm Security Administration during the Great Depression. Post Wolcott was distinctive in her unsentimental approach. The best of her pictures, such as this one, combine concern for questions of poverty, class, and race with general observations about the human condition.