This 1946 Ohio River shantyboat view is by Joe Adams, a lithographer of Cincinnati scenes about whom virtually no information is to be found. Adams’ viewpoint is from the Kentucky bank of the Ohio with Cincinnati’s Mount Adams in the distance. This lithograph and another by him turned up in a bookstore in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 2015. Adams was working in the 1940s, and his style bears some resemblance to that of Cincinnati artist Kenneth W. Ozier.

Regional and national artists captured that particular way of life from the 1920s through the 1940s. Adams is featured in PFA Press's Black and White: Kentucky Prints and Printmakers from the Collection of Warren and Julie Payne.