Advertising has become a central theme in today’s society. The business of selling bombards us in magazines, on television, and in this case on billboards. What we see here is a man working for, according to his t-shirt, “Made Ya Look, which can only be assumed is a billboard company, applying or smoothing out the picture of a young child’s forehead. The image of the child is in black and white while the man on the ladder appears to be the focus of the photo, in color. We cannot see what is being advertised on this billboard but we can gather what the photographer is trying to say, children look and are exposed to hundreds of advertisements a day.
This picture seems to have almost a “plus-sign” composition. The ladder is running straight down the middle of the picture while the eyes are evenly spaced on either side. The man on the ladder has both arms out and his body just about vertical, forming another cross. The bangs of the child fall vertically in this photo and the ladder, the eyelashes, the squeegee, and the man all line up. The eyes are the only linear feature of this photograph, making the stand out as the focus.
There is a sense of sadness in this photograph, expressed by the color and the fact that we can only see the eyes of the child. The eyes seem to have a glare or upset nature about them and the man on the ladder is ignoring the glance. The simple fact that these are child eyes makes it upsetting, even though we know it is just the image of a child and he very well may be acting within an advertisement.
