Friday 14 February 2014

Postcard of the Day No. 64, Main Street, Pawling NY


Today’s postcard is a small town scene from rural New York state. There’s a tree-lined dirt road and a railroad crossing complete with diamond-style warning sign in front of a neat clapboard house. Other dwellings can be glimpsed through the trees. The caption tells us that we are on Main Street and looking east from National Bank. The road is empty of human presence, the weather is overcast. Depending on your angle of approach it’s featureless and devoid of interest or it’s a haunting image of stillness and ominous emptiness. The railroad and the clapboard house are still there after a hundred years or so but the trees have gone. Cloning out the warning sign removes the focal point but curiously, the greater sense of emptiness does little harm to the image. 



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