A guide to Lovecraft Country’s many pop culture tropes and references

"Several times throughout the episode, particularly in the montage of Black life we see as the group road trips across America, Lovecraft Country artfully pays homage to real photographs by seminal Black photographers. Gordon Parks, who later gained broader fame as the director of Shaft, was a renowned photojournalist who captured some of the most iconic images of mid-century life amid Jim Crow and a segregated nation. “Sundown” visually references two of his most well-known photos, Untitled, Shady Grove, Alabama, 1956, and Department Store, Mobile, Alabama, 1956.

An even more famous reference appears when we see a number of people waiting in a long line under a cheery billboard. The reference is to Black photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White’s famous Depression-era photo of displaced Black residents seeking work relief after a flood in Kentucky in 1937."

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HBO’s Lovecraft Country: All references in episode 1, “Sundown,” explained - Vox