Ernst Haas

 Ernst Hass was born on March 2, 1921, in Vienna, Austria. He was mainly a photojournalist and color photographer and spent 40 years in his career.  He spent his early years studying art and gaining an education, but once World War 2 broke out, he could no longer study due to Germany's invasion of Austria. After his father died, he started gaining more interest in photography which later culminated into a long and highly decorated career. He became president of Magnum Photos and had his photos in many museums and popular magazines, such as Vogue. He was listed as one of the 10 greatest photographers in the world by a magazine and he won the Hasselblad Award. After his death in 1985, he had multiple awards named after him such as the Ernst Haas Award for Creative Photography.

While browsing through Ernst's pictures, this one really caught my eye. It's a landscape photo showing a suburban road in the 20th century. There are a couple of things I like about this photo. The first one is the many signs being captured. It looks visually appealing to see so many different signs, each with their own color and style, lined up the way they are. It almost feels like the signs are blending into each other yet still having their own unique personality. I also like seeing brands that are still around today looking so different from how they were in the picture. An example of this is the KFC building. It honestly looks fancier and more appealing to look at in comparison to stores today. It's like a snapshot in history, showing how different things were, and yet at the same time it showed how things stayed the same. 

Another reason I like this picture is the environment. It gives me a sense of nostalgia that I haven't really gotten in other photos. The cluttered buildings, the wet roads, the high traffic, all of that reminds me of home. Just like how I talked about in my previous paragraph, everything seems so different yet not a lot has changed. The cars look older than they are now, but they still work the same way, with the same type of people driving them, all heading to their destinations. This picture seems to show a small but important portion of life in this town, and it also represents America all together.