Fort Peck Dam, Montana 1936

Margaret Bourke-White made this photograph of Fort Peck Dam, Montana, sometime in the mid-twentieth century. What strikes me about this image is the contrast between the monumental architecture and the human figures at its base. The cool greys and blacks give the concrete an almost painterly texture, despite the industrial subject. Look at how the light catches the edges of the dam's buttresses, creating strong diagonal lines, and how the sky seems to swirl with a texture as solid as the concrete. I am drawn to the two tiny figures at the bottom—they really show the scale of the structure, but are also a nice compositional detail. It reminds me of a Caspar David Friedrich painting, where tiny figures contemplate the vastness of nature. Bourke-White's work often captures these kinds of juxtapositions, where human endeavors meet the grand scale of the landscape, blurring the line between the built and the natural world.