City of Sacramento 

Editor: This is "City of Sacramento," a woodcut print by Fay Chong. I find the high contrast really striking and creates this almost stark feeling. What should we be paying attention to in this piece? Curator: The directness of woodcut suits Chong's socially engaged art. Woodcuts are historically linked with populist movements, accessible as a medium for mass dissemination of ideas. Think about its relationship to labor: how does this stark rendering reflect the artist's experience or commentary on work and industrialization during the period when Sacramento modernized? Editor: That's fascinating, I didn’t consider that at all. Does that relationship with labor impact how he depicts the boat or even the city behind it? Curator: Absolutely. Consider the strong diagonals and bold lines of the ship. Where are we positioned in relation to it? And how does Chong's choice to use such a graphic, almost architectural style to render these elements contribute to a narrative of progress, or perhaps of the impact of such development? Are there figures present? Editor: I see two people walking. So the print isn’t totally absent of humanity but… it is dwarfed by the machines. I am gathering that the woodcut's bold style makes you see a lot of those sociopolitical questions around labor? Curator: Exactly. Chong prompts us to critically examine not just the visual representation but the cultural and socio-economic forces that shape our understanding of “progress”. So, what do we take away when considering both the medium and the subject? Editor: I'm now viewing it less as just a historical image and more as a statement about the changing landscape of cities, even now. It’s incredible how much history can be embedded in a print!