ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the image elements and the subject matter, and attempts to discern the greater meaning, the meaning that is beyond the sum of the component parts. Elliott Kravits' image is no exception. The idea of reflection is already built in, representing the world as people are meant to see it and, in this case, a body of water rendering it upside down. Many famous images, often landscapes, have made effective use of this visual strategy. This image functions not in the symmetrically pleasing way people have come to expect from bodies of water serenely reflecting their surroundings. Instead, it shows us a flooded urban landscape and a pedestrian negotiating the gap between the still frozen snow and the melt-water. Cartier Bresson's image, Behind the Gare St. Lazare, Paris 1932, is considered to be among photographs that have pioneered frozen action images at just the right moment, the "decisive moment", with great tension and compositional complexity.
