Moving On

Arthur Rothstein, “Moving On” 1936

Here we can see a family ‘moving on’ with the police officer there to ensure that they do leave their home. The picture shows people either loading or unloading belongings from the back of a truck. Given the title ‘moving on’ one would assume they are loading the items onto the truck rather than unloading.

The most interesting figure in the picture is represented by the police officer. A man who enforces the law who seemingly is quite contempt with the situation. It's as if he does this quite often and does not feel any remorse for the people he has to see leave their home. You get the impression that despite how difficult some of the items may have been to load onto the back of the truck he would have stood motionless and offered no help at all. The cigar only enhances this view in that he does not care for the people leaving. A man of the law should really, be as helpful as possible but he just stands by watching enjoying his cigar.

From the image we don't know how many people are actually being moved. This could be just one persons stuff and therefore would have to get help from nearby people to load their items onto the truck. There doesn't appear to be any young people in the image which may suggest that perhaps a couple are being forced to move. Then looking at the image we can see help is being offered and still the police officer would be likely to do nothing to help out.