Billboard, Birmingham, Alabama 1936

Walker Evans made this photograph of a billboard in Birmingham, Alabama, and it's like a stage set, isn't it? A black and white stage set. The flat, almost naive rendering of the interior scene suggests a kind of process, maybe an older method of sign painting, where the clarity of the message trumps any kind of fancy technique. Look at that door, how it's painted with a scrubby brush, all cloudy and uncertain. It feels so raw and immediate. It's like the painter was in a hurry, or maybe they just didn't care too much about making it look perfect. And then there's the way the whole thing is constructed, like a patchwork of different panels. It's so honest about its own making, about the process of putting it together. It reminds me a bit of some of Philip Guston's later paintings, you know, the ones with the clunky, cartoonish figures. Both artists seem to be embracing a kind of awkwardness, a willingness to let the process show. And that's what makes it so interesting, right? It's not trying to be anything it's not. It's just there, in all its messy, imperfect glory.