American Gothic

I chose the very first picture we discussed as a class, "American Gothic." I chose this one because I believe it showed a number of the points Bang was trying to get across. Take for example, the man's head in the picture. He has a very smooth, round head which makes us feel stable and calm. But this feeling is kind of thrown off when we look down and see that he has a very pointy, sharp pitch fork in his hand. Also take for example, the house in the background. It comes to a point at the very middle which makes us feel scared. I also noticed the background of the picture is like a pale blue sky. As Bang says, we feel safer looking at light backgrounds instead of dark, because we can see well in the daylight and poorly at night. Lastly, I noticed the relationship of the couple in the picture. The man seems to be staring directly into our eyes, and the woman will not make eye contact with the picture. From the looks of it, they seem unhappy and I would definitely say that the man is the leader while the woman is the follower in the relationship.