
Photographs are often able to touch people’s emotions much better than text. As the saying goes “A picture is worth a thousand words.” People can use pictures to tell a story, or in the case of the Environmental Protection Agency, use pictures to show the people of the United States how bad the environment was. In the 1970’s, the newly formed agency was tasked with convincing citizens of the United States of America that the environment was in poor condition. To do this, photographers were sent out to capture pictures that illustrated how bad the environment was becoming. The plan was to return to the same spots several years later to see if things had become better or worse, but the project lost funding before this could happen. Fortunately, before the project was cut, thousands of photographs were taken that captured how humans were negatively impacting the environment like the one above. This picture shows a simple house surrounded by wilderness, but the beauty of the forest and home is crushed by the smoke stacks in the background. I argue that the photographer, Harry Schaefer, used the position and size of the power plant to symbolize and make people think of the effects that humans were having on the environment in the 1970’s.

In the foreground of this picture is a simple house with a few cars and a garage. Surrounding the house is a forest and grass. If you look closely, just to the right of the house, you can spot a person standing behind the sheets that are hanging on a wire. In the background, there is a tall, skinny tower surrounded by three large towers used to cool down a power plant. As these structures are part of a power plant and are clearly producing some sort of smoke, it is clear that they are harming the environment. 

In most pictures the subject is placed in the foreground, as the subject is the most important part of the picture. As the most important part of a photo, it should be in front of the frame and in focus. However, this is not the case in this picture. Here, the subject is the large structures in the background, spewing smoke into the air. I argue that this was done on purpose. This was done to symbolize the fact that the environment is often in the background of our lives. We do not think about how the actions of our everyday lives affect the environment. This is why the photographer took the picture from where he took it. He easily could have taken a close up picture of the power plant, but instead, took it where it was in the shadows and out of the mind of the viewer.

While looking at the picture, one cannot help but notice the intimidating size of the smoke stacks compared to the small house. Again, this was not done on accident. This was done to symbolize the fact that the environment is a very important factor to the wellbeing of humans. The large size of the structures makes the viewer subconsciously think about the importance of the environment, but because it is placed in the background it can be easy to forget about how important the environment is.

The size of the smokestacks in the background symbolizes another idea as well as the one stated before. The size of the structures and the endless smoking coming out of them is saying that the damage being done to the environment is getting out of control, it is becoming too big of a problem for us to handle. When the EPA was created, the environment was at an all time low, and there were no signs of it getting better. The photographer showed this by taking a picture of the environmentally-damaging smoke stacks while they were extremely large compared to their surroundings and producing harmful smoke. The image of the large structures producing smoke ingrains the idea of humans impacting the environment negatively into the viewer’s head.

In order for the EPA to show that the environment was in horrible shape, the photographer took the photo so that the size and location of the power plant symbolized the effect that our actions were having on the environment. This picture is a perfect example of how photographers can make a photograph say more than what it looks like at first glance and how often times it takes a closer analysis to find the deeper meaning and intention of a picture. 
