
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 Americans that the environment was in poor condition. To do this, photographers were sent out to capture pictures that illustrated the highlights of this crumbling environment. 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 (Simmons). The picture above shows a simple house surrounded by wilderness, but the beauty of the forest and home is crushed by the factory in the background. In this picture the photographer, Harry Schaefer, uses the position and size of the power plant, as well as the color of the clouds, to symbolize and provoke thought about the effects that humans were having on the environment in the 1970’s.

In the foreground of this picture there 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 and is in focus, as it is the most important part of the picture. However, this is not the case in this picture. Here, the subject is the large factory spewing smoke into the air. Schaefer choose to take the picture so that the subject would be in the background, but he did so in a way that still made it large and the center of attention. He does this 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 and this was even more so the case in the 1970’s as people were a lot more wasteful than we are today. This is why the photographer took the picture from where he took it. He easily could have taken a close up shot of the factory but instead positioned it where it would symbolize people’s lack of concern for the environment. 

The size of the smokestacks in the background 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 large 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 what seems like an endless amount of harmful smoke. The grey background, created by the factories emissions and clouds, sets up a depressing feeling to add to the intimidation size of the factory from before. This combination of size and color gives off an all around dismal feeling. The image of the large structures producing the dark smoke emphasizes the idea of humans impacting the environment negatively.

While looking at the picture, one cannot help but notice the intimidating size of the smoke stacks compared to the small house. The house is important because it introduces a human element. Without the home we would be left with just a large factory dominating a forest. The inclusion of the home brings people closer to what is going on in the image. When you pair the home and the enormous factory in the background you are left with a relationship that symbolizes 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 in their life, or rather, makes the viewer think of how the environment should play a more important role in their life.

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 effects 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. 
