Originally Posted by
cowanw
A brilliant pictorialist riposte to Paul Strand’s “White Fence”. Both images act as a living symbol of rural America, and also of the symbols of ownership and property delimitation. Strand's image shows a bold white foreground laid down over a dark ground, while yours melds the tonal range of the fence into that of the fields and the house. Strand, drawing on the ideals of modern art, uses the properties of the fence to create a dynamic composition that does not employ traditional perspective. Your image returns to the static and central composition with pictorialist tones and a clever use of soft focus.
It is unclear what the principle subject of your image is as the tonalities of house, field and fence make a choice imprecise. The furrows of the fields and the slats of the fence lead us not directly to the house but to the space between house and tree, which creates a sense of disquiet or uncertainty.
The house, the structure of American desire, is dilapidated, with dark soulless windows and a closed unwelcoming door. The fields plowed and planted in long lines across the full width of the picture speak of industrial farming; the dilapidated house has been sold with the land to the corporation and is empty and left to ruin.
The fence is not the bright new dynamic fence of Strand’s modern world. It is a snow fence put up to stop the cold winds and snows of winter, but it has not been taken down in the spring. There are no longer people to maintain it and it is broken uneven and tonally merged into the fields. Strand's fence is a fence that is desirable, even enviable. This fence represents a barrier to access, to keep out the experience and wisdom and change that come with the winter wind.
From the shadows cast and the mostly bright sky, it seems to be morning, but from the East, the sky, which tends brighter to the left, is inexplicitly darkened in the corner just as much as is the right but the effect is heightened. (there is a stop or so tonal difference in the natural right and left skies; consider maintaining this difference if you do darken the corners) At the same time all of the left is out of focus, fuzzy, undefined and the trees lining the horizon of the field are knurled and deformed. There is darkness and fuzziness and softness from the left. On the other hand, the right is sharp, crisp, well defined. Veracity and sharpness are on the right, while ignoring the decay of the house and fence.
The tall conifer towers over all else. Is this nature that will still be there after the complexities of man have crumbled?
This might be a brilliant pictorial comment on the decaying of America and its turn to the right despite the failure of ownership and property delimitation! Or it might be that the image is an expression of your idea of a perfectly natural pretty picture- abandoned house, industrial farming and dilapidated fence.
I reread parts of my criticism books but they all require a statement of intent to critique whether a photograph is successful or not.
We do not know what your purpose was regarding this image, so we cannot comment on the success of the picture.
I have an expectation that what I have written will be disposed of quickly. Nevertheless, reflect that, even if you just thought it was a pretty picture, something in your mind made you decide this was an image that you wanted to make. You have decided to depict the tonally indistinct fence, field, and house in a static central composition.
Something made you think this image was worthy to make? I cannot know what that was but this is what it made me think about.
I tried to enlarge the image and this took me to Flickr where a lot of people liked this, so good on that.