>>3916984I'll give it a swing.
1. Dog's open mouth is echoed by the shadow of the street sign
2. Repetition in the hub cab to the fire extinguisher
3. The dog is bisected by the pole. The Dog in "Dog House" is also bisected by the pole. It happens again on the far right side of the photo as well, but it depends on the crop on whether or not you can see this.
4. More repetition between the front panel of the car on the right and the one across the road. Light and dark.
5. What the fuck is with this dog? Where is its owner? Why is it waiting to cross the road? No leash? In fact, where are the people anywhere in this scene? You're left with the impression of a ghost town. The only cars are parked. There are no pedestrians. It's a dog and his corner.
6. The obvious joke about a dog, having visited the hydrant, now continues on with his day.
7. Old Georgian-style house, low and proud, with a new construction modern apartment building lurking behind, encroaching on what was formerly a placid scene. Behind, the open sky beckons with the promise of a modernizing west. There might be more apartments to fill that void soon. (of course, this being albuquerque, joke's on him, this intersection more or less still looks exactly like this)
8. Where you see a thoughtlessly, carelessly composed scene is actually a carefully thought out critique of the visual clutter that began to take over in the 50's and 60's. Everything is intersected with something else. The electrical box intersects the car, and the street pole to the right of that. The pole intersects the dog. The traffic pole bisects the car. The electrical pole bisects the house, and so on and so forth. This ugliness that pervades the west was a new visual language, one of utilitarian city planning and the ugliest style of civil engineering. It's functional chaos, and disrupts what would have been a normally placid scene a few decades prior.
