Highway Corner, Reedsville, West Virginia
1935
- Medium
- Gelatin silver print
- Dimensions
- 25.4 × 20.6 cm
- Status
- In Museum Collection
- Collect24 Art ID
- C24-717807
In this photograph of a highway corner in West Virginia, signs proliferate and dominate, with no visible person to read them. The gas station, the traveler's last stop out of town, anchors the corner, a solid brick building that proudly reveals its nationalistic bent with the bold announcement that "AMERICAN GAS" is sold there. A formidable, solid telephone pole cuts vertically through the frame in the foreground while another peeks out from behind it in the distance. Wires busily intersect the sky, and a large, round sign for the telephone company announces the communication system. Despite all the evidence of devices to keep people connected, the image projects an ironic sense of emptiness and desolation.
Provenance
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Registry history
- 1935 — Recorded in the collection of J. Paul Getty Museum — photographs
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