Human Dignity

Chris McNair

1963; printed later

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Black and White, James Brooks, lithograph
A black and white photograph featuring a woman wearing a bathing suit siting on wet sand. Her leg is folded behind her and she is bending forward, with only her torso and lower half in the frame, beneath her foot the trailing water from a wave has left a shallow arc in the wet sand. Her foot appears slightly anchored in wet sand.
In the right foreground, in a bare space that may be near a stream, a woman tends a fire that heats a kettle, while a man holds a pig for scalding. A few logs lie in the left foreground. The grassy slope of the deep foreground rises to a level ridge in the middle ground, where tall, nearly leafless trees rise as silhouettes against the sky, on the left. Just beyond the top of the slope on the left is the upper part of a large building with several chimneys. An outbuilding is closer on the right. Near the top of the slope, left of center, a woman walks with a basket on her head. There may be another, more distant figure at the far left. The moon is high in the center of a sky with few clouds.
Air-motor, Merritt Mauzey, lithograph