Dat mean old puddy tat twying to EAT Tweety!

From Ben Shahn's biography on the LOC website:

Shahn's casual attitude about matters of photographic technique stemmed from his use of photographs as a basis for drawings and paintings. He tended to think of his compact 35 mm Leica as a mechanical sketchpad. Despite the fact that some of his Resettlement Administration photographs were exhibited as early as 1936, Shahn continued to insist that they "weren't just photographs to me: in a real sense they were the raw materials of painting."

Ben Shahn (1898-1969) is perhaps better known as a Social Realist painter. Apparently his own photographs provided some subject material for his paintings. His 1939 painting titled "Self Portrait Among Church Goers" clearly shows the two women in this photograph transposed to the two female figures on the left side of the group in the painting.

Art imitating art?

You can pick up a drawstring pouch of Stud smoking tobacco on Ebay. It will cost a bit more than five cents.