In all three images, we see Estes using light in different ways to highlight the subjects of her portraits. She does a wonderful job leading eye with positioning, orientation and balance of the visual elements. In the first image, she has the light mainly hitting the child and the mother's arm which she is resting on. The mother is visible in the darker background with the light forming some darker gradients against her clothing and face. Also in this image we see a lovely diagonal formed by the subjects starting in the lower left corner and ending in the upper right corner. In both this image and the third image,whether it be a dark blue with a lighter magenta or a darker magenta with a lighter blue, we see some lovely color contrast between the clothing of the subjects. In the third image we continue to see her lovely balance of elements as the man and child are centered subjects, almost framed by the rectangular shape formed by poles, branches, and brush. In the right part of the image (which is not framed by the pole) we see a clearing in the brush, revealing a cloudy mountainous landscape in the background, adding even more depth and an even greater level of balance to the image. Also in this image, the light is hitting the subjects directly from the left side, forming a shadow on the bottom right part of the image which contrasts beautifully with the lighter blue and white colored clearing in the background. Similar to the third image, in the second image there is another rectangle that forms a frame around the subjects, which are all centered and being hit by light from the back. This formed silhouettes of the subjects that have some nice outlines with gradients of that start to give you hints of the details of their bodies. Also in this image she there is a nice balance between the taller children and the empty space on the right side contrasted with the smaller child and the filled space on the left side of the image.
As the country of China industrializes, more people have been migrating to cities, leaving behind elders and younger children in the rural areas. Estes chose to capture this very interesting historical event in the Chinese culture. In the first image, we see a woman who looks to be pregnant sleeping during the day with her young child resting her head on the her arm as she lay awake. The mother being asleep during the day may mean she has been working hard and needed a rest. The child is more lit, bored-looking and awake in the light and that extends into the mother looking exhausted further back in the darkness. The imagery here does more than just begin to tell the story of the effects that this industrialization and migration has had on this family. In the second image we see three children standing in the dark during the day. This suggests that there is no electrical light source, or if there is, it needs to be spared for night times. Also here we start to see tools and things that adult farmers would use but they all look so huge juxtaposed to these small children, further pushing the idea that there is a gap left behind as a result of migration. In the last image we see the contrast between the 2 subjects being an old woman and a young child. The child seems to be squirming, awkward or uncomfortable, and there is a dark shadow formed between the two that is even cut off at the head, again suggesting some sort of lifeless disparity.
I'm a firm believer that the direction followed by the viewer's eye should have them looking around all elements in the picture. Not only does Estes achieve this but she is even controlling the order of that direction masterfully. Also, i really appreciate that she chose to tell the story of a hardship that is probably overlooked, as most stories of unindustrialized areas are. I see here an emotionally filled series of stories that have me (and hopefully most viewers) yearning to help fill or at the very least, understand the gap that is left behind due to industrialization and migration. She tells a sad story of imbalance with a beautiful sense of visual balance.
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