First published in Our State: Down Home in North Carolina, this photograph was taken in the early 1960s near Maxton, North Carolina. It is one of the first silhouette photographs I ever took and it won several pictorial awards in North Carolina.

This photograph has always been one of my favorites. Somehow my eyes go from the trees to the two figures and then focus on the young boy. It was taken on a farm in late afternoon as the farmer and his son were headed home. It is distinctly three dimensional with the dust billowing in the background from their feet hitting the dusty path next to the field being worked that day.

I felt that the days of working on small farms would come to end. Those were days when father and son and mother and daughter worked with the earth to coax forth fields of cotton, tobacco, corn, and wheat. It was hard work but less complicated than the digital age. It was based on family values. It was based on survival by teamwork.