What's Behind the Wall?

Pictures can show a variety of characteristics of a setting. They can give the audience different senses of feelings such as smell, temperature, taste, emotion, etc. A black and white picture can present situations in ways that let the audience easily decipher the color. A cookbook can persuade the reader how delicious a food is by making the recipe’s result very contrasting. Don’t get me wrong, words can describe pictures as in depth as well, it is just that the pictures may give a better sense of reality and will constrict one’s sense of imagination to a limit. The America in color photo gallery consists of actual pictures taken in the early twentieth century. Though the basic summary of each picture is stated underneath each picture, the pictures are presented like words with deep connotations. Our knowledge of the past is certainly relatable to the reality of each picture.

The twenty eighth picture in the gallery consists of California’s know fully functioning dam being built by thousands of construction workers. Just by analyzing the “ancient” technology the construction workers are using, we can infer that they were working much more than we would have worked today if we were given such a project. It also gives the picture a a historical look.  We can see the dirt and mud smear down the sides of the dam. This shows how much time has passed in creating such a massive structure; months and seasons have passed, indicating the dam has gone through rain, thunderstorms, heat, erosion, maybe even snow. The cranes and the cables supporting the cranes function as a “connecting” force for the two sides of the dam. All the workers on both sides have to come together to build the dam, presenting a sense of community.

We can look at the dam as a big wall in construction, or we could look at it as a huge project that was seemingly impossible for the overwhelmed workers who were eventually given confidence by the joint cooperation in building the dam. Either way we look at it, there is more than one story behind the whole setting.