Dimensions: sheet: 18.7 x 22.5 cm (7 3/8 x 8 7/8 in.)
Copyright: National Gallery of Art: CC0 1.0
Walker Evans made this photograph of Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania, with what seems like simple directness. But look closer, it’s anything but. The image is a study in contrasts – the solid, boxy houses versus the unruly trees, the sharp lines of the telephone poles against the soft, blurred road. The telephone pole is so present, it almost feels like a figure, a stand-in for a person, or maybe for the photographer himself. There's a melancholic atmosphere, yet the composition is so solid, so deliberate. It reminds me of the photographs of Eugene Atget, in the way that it finds a strange beauty in the everyday. It’s this tension between the beauty and the banality that makes the image so compelling. Like all great art, it resists easy answers.
Be the first to comment and join the conversation on the ultimate creative platform.