During the depression it wouldn’t be uncommon to see a sight
like this. Hanging clothes on lines outside of apartment buildings isn’t
something one would think twice about. However, this photograph shows exactly
what the depression was doing to people. If you start from the top you notice
that there’s no clothes and as you go down the building the load of clothes
gets larger and larger. This depicts the weight of the depression on the
classes of America.
If one is
on the top earnings of classes, the highest on the clothing line, they have
little to no weight on their shoulders. They are slightly affected by what’s
going on. The middle class has more clothes and more worries as depicted in
this photo but the people with the most clothes and the most worries are those
who live on the lower levels of the apartment. This represents the lower class
of America. Those in the lower class during the great depression were literally
living with the world smashing on top of them. They had all the worries in the
world even though they could do nothing about it. They had to have hope in
those in the classes above them although the classes above them didn’t truly understand
what they were going through.
Those living
in the upper classes don’t know what it’s like to have to wash and hang so many
clothes. They don’t know what it’s like to live on less than a dollar a day. Therefore
they have no urgency to change things. They don’t have as many things wet
therefore they don’t have to spend as much time drying them. So although those
on lower end of the apartment had more problems they had very little control
over their circumstance and had to depend on those above them.
I like your interpretation of what you believe what the photographer was trying to get across. I completely agree that the deeper meaning of the picture is that lower class and middle class have more clothes to put up to dry than the upper class who really did not have to worry about their own clothes. They don’t have to worry about the things that people who were the suffering due to the depression. Hanging of clothes something that lower class people do and I also like how the view is like an aerial view of all the clothes hanging across different apartments.
ReplyDeleteIt looks like the image didn't load properly here. However, I remember the image from your presentation. I think that this is a creative interpretation of the image because it takes something that seems straightforward and applies a more significant element to it---the function of social class in one's circumstances during the Great Depression. Is there anything else about the image that would lead you to think that class is important?
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