Billboard, Birmingham, Alabama 1936

Here’s Walker Evans’ photograph of a painted billboard he found in Birmingham, Alabama. It's rendered in shades of gray, sepia really, and it sort of gives the impression of the making of a film set. I can imagine the artist meticulously setting up his shot, trying to capture not just the image on the billboard but also the texture of the wood, the way the paint has faded, the underlying structure, and the wild grasses at the bottom. He's thinking about framing, about surface, and about layers of meaning. The billboard itself depicts an interior space and the marks are all visible in the black paint of the doorframe. There are several different planes, various registers of space, and a few pieces of furniture set against a blank background. It reminds me of Picasso and Braque and their cubist experiments with space and representation. It shows how artists are in constant dialogue. How one thing leads to another, and that's where the magic happens.