This photo makes me angry and sad, and it strains me to look at it.
We were very poor when I was growing up, and so, as a teenager, I had to go to work in the mills. I didn’t want to but I didn’t have a choice. That’s the things about choice; you don’t understand how wonderful having a choice is until you don’t have one. So I went to work in the mills. I cannot tell you I am a better person for it. I can’t tell you that working away my teenage years in a filthy, dangerous factory made me a better person in some way, because it didn’t it. So when I see this photo it upsets me...but that’s why this is a great photo. Without words, it evokes a deep emotion, it makes me remember and think, it takes me from where I am at this moment and places me in that factory with that little girl. There are, for me, and I think for most people, a dozen messages in this photo and you think about that and you realize what a great artist the photographer was and what a wonderful work of art this is.
