Interpreting Photographs
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| Bethlehem, Graveyard and Steel Mill - Walker Evans 1935 © Walker Evans Archive, 1994, The Metropolitan Museum of Art |
In this image by Walker Evans, there is a graveyard, a steel mill, and a city/ town in the background. A few telephone lines are strewn throughout the image and there is a large, likely stone, cross in the foreground. There are many interpretations of what this image is about but I find it slightly ironic in the sense that the graveyard is in the foreground and the steel mill is in the background; this creates a sense of cause and effect. The pollution from the mill created a hazard to the citizens and, in turn, killed the citizens. (Not good.)
Walker Evans has been extremely effective in this landscape image to communicate a point of view. I say this because the frame contains multiple aspects of the life and culture in the society and, also, it provides a canvas for the imagination to take over and to interpret the image as the viewer pleases. This is absolutely considered as art because it is intriguing and unique in the aspect that it contains multiple dimensions that allow for guided interpretation.
