An entertaining story – and your sense that Christina was “stern” during your visit is a surprise, not what I would have imagined from the Christina’s World painting above. But a life after being disabled by polio might do that to the best of us. BTW, in the painting she’s often described as “crawling” toward the house. How uncharitable – whether you know she’s disabled or not. I’ve never had that impression at all. To me, she’s been lounging in the autumn sun, and is turning about – naturally and unselfconsciously – simply to see up the hill. I’ve read that Wyeth says she was berry picking. Now I’m curious if she was being “stern” about it![/QUOTE]
Let me posit my opinion about that famous painting. Christina did not have polio but some other rare disease that at the time in the 40s and 50s was a bit of a mystery. I forget what the modern medical diagnosis has been though.
Actually before later times when she resorted to a wheelchair she used to hitch herself along in the fields as well as in the house, being unable to stand unless hanging onto something. Although many neighbors often tried to aid her she was very resolute about getting around by herself. I think her incapacity made her ever more determined to be self sufficient especially because she had the freedom to walk as a young girl.
Watching Christina so disabled around the farm had a profound effect on Andrew and when he featured her in his famous painting it was in a typical pose as he saw her, laboriously moving along on her knees while dragging her feet. This, in fact, is how she picked the low bush field blueberrys around the farm.
Now I'm going to try to understand what Andrew was thinking when he painted the scene. Of course it is a composite. He had made various sketches of Christina in her often typically contorted poses and in the painting he tried to show the the struggle involved in crawling back to the house by making the house distant and diminutive. The whole painting is spare of the trees surrounding the farm all a part of conveying a bleakness to the situation and in
concordance with his minimalist approach to isolating his ideas on canvas.
Many lessons we can take here to improve our own photography but perhaps the most important is the necessity of ruthlessly removing elements that are distractions from what you are trying to show in your image.
Nate Potter, Austin TX.
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Originally Posted by Alan Gales
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