Sign

I thought I’d put up a picture up here, since I’ve been thinking about photography a lot lately while working on this post about photos that doesn’t come along very well, and I happened on this great image by Joe van Cleave.

This image of a sign, the only remainder of a gas station, struck me. There it is, a picture of an indian, held up in the blue sky, in front of this uneventful landscape. The landscape might actually be beautiful, if you could see outside the picture. The schematic drawing style of the picture prevents it to be indentified as someone of a particular tribe. It has become a generic sign, saying “indian”, or “indians here”. Yes, there used to be. This was a different country once. You can still see the contours of the hills, the colors of the landscape might not even have changed that much. But there’s a highway now, and you can see the tops of the roofs of houses beyond. And there’s only the sign left, even the gas station isn’t there any more.