Poverty

 

Abandoned House by Walker Evans, 1973-74, The Metropolitan Museum of  Art

This picture projects poverty to me. In my imagination and personal experience, this is what poverty looks like. In my hijack, I wanted to deepen this narrative. I do not think just because the house looks abandoned and is small, that it signifies poverty. The elements in the picture can give context that this house is not taken care of. Dead grass, tilted structure, no paint.

In my sketch, I wanted to emphasize poverty. I was reminded about the struggles that people go through because of how the home looked. I wanted to hijack the image by escalating from neutral to negative. The home is home regardless of how it looks, but a poor mother can not care for her son in today's society in a home like this. A mother does all that she can even beg strangers. Poverty makes you powerless. A woman had no assets, no money. All she had was her small abandoned home, and that was not enough to keep her son so Child Protective Services picked him up. I feel as though adding human figures to this picture would add more meaning and present emotion.