The photographs for which he became famous show a vanishing Alabama with dilapidated buildings, rusting automobiles, advertising signs, and grave-sites. He took color photos at a time when most journalistic photographers worked in black and white.
He was greatly influenced by "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men," the 1941 book of photographs by Walker Evans with a text by James Agee.
When he was 8, he and his sister received a shared gift of a Brownie camera. He used that camera throughout his career.
He studied painting at the University of Alabama, receiving a master's degree in 1959. He taught painting and drawing at Washington's Corcoran School of the Arts and Design for 40 years.