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DAY 100 | SOCIAL & POLITICAL COMMENTARY |
Mighty Transportation
POWER ON WHEELS
Transportation enables products to be delivered across continents and within nations, quickly delivers people from one location to the next, and until e-mail, had control over simple communication, such as documents and letters.
Dependence upon a petroleum-based transportation system generates power and places it in the hands of those who manage the industry and the political powers who support its growth. Whole sectors of the economy are founded on the use of transportation—the auto industry, insurance, and airlines. Others are expanded through the use of transportation—trucking of food and products across state lines and region to region, and the exporting and importing of the same products overseas. The more money made, the bigger the political power game.
Toward Los Angeles, California, 1937. Photo by Dorothea Lange. Courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Capturing the mighty power of transportation in a photograph can succeed from several angles—the industry, the commuter, the habitual passenger, the lobbyists, the politicians, a business establishment. A photographer’s foray into a crowd of commuters reveals the stress of traveling daily. A visit to a rail yard, a cargo container company, a shipping port, a freeway during rush hour—each contains a piece of information about the political power of transportation. —MLR