FSA Photo of the Week

Our FSA photo of the week:

This looks like a Walker Evans quotation, I'm not sure it's deliberate though. Lots of good material in the frame, I think, and a nicely handled set of tones. Despite the relatively bright lighting I think it sells as a dimly lit space. What's interesting to me is that the apparent subject, the crock or whatever it is in the center, is really just a negative space. The subject is actually the desk-like object holding it up which is weirdly half buried in straw or hay, and which turns out to be a sewing machine. After a little while you realize that you're looking at some stuff that's been stored away someplace, but it took me a moment or two to work that out.

It's a little busy, perhaps, there might be a little too much going on in the frame, but it's all such good stuff I cannot help but like it.

Birdsboro (vicinity), Berks County, Pennsylvania. Sewing machine in the hayloft on the farm of FSA (Farm Security Administration) client Dallas E. Glass, shot by Dick Sheldon, August 1938.