Inspired by Dorothea Lange’s Tractored Out, Childress County, Texas, 1938,
A photograph taken during her tenure with the Farm Security Administration
I. Security
The government controlled the development
process, kept a tight grip on the negatives,
dictated just what and just how much
truth was released to the public.
But they underestimated the power:
speed of the shutter, grip of the lens,
how one woman could harness blatant lies
told by natural light. She could photograph a soul
without a single body trapped in the picture.
II. Agency
We did not know, some sixty years prior,
we’d been caught in a frame. The taxed-out
state of soil not yet evident,
sold undisclosed. We did not know
our new coat of paint would peel like dead
skin from a clapboard farmhouse in the heart
of drought. Can we be blamed for our love, long
dead before the purchase—a gray-scale field,
one thousand rows, monochrome rainbows
bled fruitless to frowns?
Image Courtesy of Christie's; Lot 21, Sale 1451
No comments:
Post a Comment