The Divide - Final Exam

         This image, titled “On the Edge”, photographed by Alex S. Maclean, an American photographic artist, is an important American contemporary photograph because it connects to the themes of social class, race, and realism and idealism.
         In this image I automatically notice the road that divides the two towns. On the left side, there are large, white houses, surrounded by healthy, good, looking landscape. Each house looks similar to one another, with its equal spacing, shape, color, and size. On the right side of the road, I see the lack of polished looking landscape, and I notice more defined looking houses, with their unique colors and shapes. This made me wonder how such two distinctly contrasting towns could live just right across the street from one another.
          This sharp contrast of towns reminds me of the field trip we took to the south side of Chicago. The left side of the photo, with its pristine and bubbled life, represents us, the North Shore, while the right side of the photo symbolizes urbanized Chicago. During this field trip we were supposed to take note of the different environment we were in. Elisa Hillman made an interesting observation. She noted that, “The people in Chicago are more individual” than the people of the North Shore. The word “individual”, meaning single or separate, is very intriguing considering that the North Shore, I would argue, is the complete opposite of that. The North shore is enclosed within this conformed “bubble”, with its identical looking houses, while Chicago contains a more uncensored town, with its different colored houses, and unusual landscaping, creating a more “individualism” environment.
          As I mentioned above, there is a clear divide between the two towns. As such, the title, “On the Edge” seems very suitable for this photo because each town is at the edge of one another. However, I read the title more as the citizens within each town are at the very edge of crossing it and stepping into new boundaries, but fail to do so.
           This incompletion of a task reminds me of the Emancipation Proclamation. During class, we observed the flaws associated with this document due to its incapability of freeing all slaves. This document, as Foner explains, “did not liberate all slaves- indeed…it applied to very few (494).” Yet, just as the citizens are at the very “edge” of their town, this document was touching the margins of slavery. Here Foner explains that, “despite its limitations [of the Proclamation of Emancipation], …[it] set off scenes of jubilation among free blacks and abolitionist in the North and “contrabands” and slaves in the South (495).” Looking at the word “jubilation”, meaning the feeling of triumph, conveys the idea that these slaves or free blacks thought the U.S. was, again, on the edge of heading in the right direction to abolish slavery.
           Another characteristic I notice in the photograph is the absence of people, however, it may just be because I cannot see people from the angle at which this photo was taken. Nonetheless, I am curious to why there is not heavy crowd of people trying to cross over from town to town. Is it because these people are not able to, or is it because they just choose not to? Ultimately, this observation reminds of Rachel Hoying’s blog post - “Modern Abolitionist”. In her post she describes how people automatically say that if they were alive during the Civil War they would all become strong abolitionist. Even so, as Rachel points out, “…there is a form of slavery going on in our own country right now, and very few people have been doing anything to stop it”. Are very few people becoming modern abolitionist because they are just not aware about modern-day slavery, or is it because they just choose to stay within their town, and not want to face the overwhelming reality.