Reframing an Image and subsequent loss of meaning

I chose this work from Ben Goossens because not only is it aesthetically pleasing to me, I like the message that it is conveying. The message that I believe it is trying to convey is that this world that we live in is bleak sometimes, no doubt about it, yet we must not let that overwhelm us, because there are definitely brilliantly beautiful things about this life as well. I interpret the picture this way because the background of the picture, which constitutes the majority of the picture, is a very grey and dark stormy sky, which is contrasted with a photograph of bright blue skies on a clothesline. This suggests that since it is a photograph, these happy times symbolized through the picture are very much real, and this photograph had to be pinned up on the clothesline by someone, so it seems as if someone is remaining hopeful through harsh times. There's also contrast in that the photograph is tilted in a way that the lines that it is comprised of is juxtaposed with that of the clothesline, which is fairly parallel to the border. Also worth noting is that the clothespin and photograph have affinity in that they are both brighter colors, while the clothesline and sky are both grey.


Stark contrast aside, what also drew my eyes to this picture was that it follows the rule of thirds where the clothespin lines up with a vertical line and the clothesline lines up with a horizontal line. And due to the way lines are perceived, my eyes are drawn to the clothespin first when looking at this picture and follow them downward into the photograph. This is because in Western culture we read things from left to right and downwards. So our eyes are essentially trained to look at things this way, even if it isn't text.

The reason I reframed the picture the way I did was to attempt to retain the meaning to a certain extent, but showing how it still changes the impact of the picture greatly. The reason for this is because you lose the vast amount of grey that almost overwhelms the small amount of bright blue in the photograph. In my reframed image, theres just about as much blue as there is grey. This is not nearly as drab a scene, which would explain why Goossens framed it the way he did. Virtually any message portrayed through a picture is active rather than didactic information that the viewer has to interpret for themselves. So, you want to make sure your message is as clear as possible. I think Goossens already did well in depicting the bleakness of reality, while still showing that there was still a decent amount of good in this world. My reframing simply does not do this as well.