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| Brandon, Manitoba, 2023 (Photo by John MacDougall) |
Why? Why this photo of a grungy, no-account alley in Brandon, Manitoba? Because it speaks to me in ways more “beautiful” photos don’t. The broken pavement, the weeds, the strands of overhead wires, the leaning wooden power poles, the three gray transformers, their grayness rhyming with the sad grayness of the sky, the rusted dumpster, the black fire escape, and most of all, the graffiti painted on the brick walls. I love it all. It’s hard to explain. It has something to do with texture, and with melancholy, and with influence. I’ve been heavily influenced by the work of Walker Evans. Some of his best photos feature power lines and telephone poles: see, for example Commercial Quarter, Steel Mill and Workers’ Houses, Birmingham, Alabama (1936), South 3rd St., Paducah, Kentucky (1947), and the great Street and Graveyard in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania (1936).
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I'm guessing because there is a sort of coherence among the elements; everything seems to hang together, everything belongs within the frame. No surprise then that you like Walker Evans. This is a good photograph.
ReplyDeleteHey that’s great feedback, Ben Royal, I appreciate it. I’m not at all sure it’s a good photo. I took much prettier shots when I was in Brandon. I took some of the garden at City Hall I really like. But of all my Brandon photos, this alley pic is the one I keep coming back to.
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