Click in the dialog box to the right, Multimedia: Slide Show, Mitch Epstein's Photos.

Photo by Mitch Epstein, ©

CHURCHILL NEIGHBORHOOD "I was drawn to this landscape because it traces a kind of visual history. Churchill is an area where a lot of federally subsidized housing developments are being put in, and the house here is obviously a brand new creation. Then you have these wonderfully built apartment buildings that the town was once filled with, which have either been abandoned or burned to the ground. And then there's the fertile, empty field with these weeds growing that echo the church spires, holding the whole thing together."

I wanted you to see this photograph particularly because of the lovely composition that most of us would never have seen with the photographer's prompting. The way the spires are reflected in the grass. The juxtaposition of the modern and the old in the building caught between the two spires, both old, evidence of the religious affiliations of the past. The fact that these are weeds, not formally planted greens in the foreground. All that kind of tells the story of the Churchill neighborhood. It's easier when Mitch Epstein points out to us so cogently what led him to the composition. But it's all there in the photo, without the words, if one is observant enough.

Here, once again, art tells us what we have become so accustomed to we sometimes rarely see. Art reminds us to see.

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