Onbekende locatie in de Verenigde Staten (Chicago?): electriciteitsmasten in een stad 1936

Wouter Cool made this photograph of an electricity pole somewhere in the United States, maybe Chicago. I like how Cool has framed the pole against the backdrop of the city architecture. I wonder if he was interested in how industrial infrastructure was transforming the urban landscape. He might have been trying to capture a sense of the modern city, with its networks of power and communication. There's a contrast here between the solid, ornate building and the more functional design of the utility pole. You can see the cables and transformers and the old-fashioned streetlamp, all rendered in tones of gray. These industrial forms are strangely beautiful, like an alphabet of another language, with its own system of communication and order. Painters often use photographs as source material, drawing inspiration from the tonal range and compositional possibilities. This image reminds us that artists are constantly looking and learning from one another, and from the world around them.