Chain Gang

William H. Johnson

William H. Johnson created the picture above. This picture really stands out to me. The way the people are in chain gangs and look like their suffering. The guy hanging down looks miserable; he is a metaphor for African Americans that were being put down by society. The fact that the guys in the picture are wearing prisoner clothing shows how African Americans were prisoners and had no freedom.  The shovels represent how hard black people were working to be accepted within society. The colors in this picture catch my attention, i like how the background its very simple and just made of three colors, but when it comes to the three guys in the picture the they're clothing and skin look very intense and it stands out.  

In this painting you can see how much suffering African Americans went through, and how brutally they were being treated. You can see how unhappy and miserable they were by the look on they're faces. African Americans were trapped and the chain gang symbolizes that. The HR theme that is reflected in this painting is negro heritage & history. I say this because in this painting William H. Johnson shows African American's history, by showing how much they have been through. He uses all this metaphors like the chain gang, shovels, and jail clothing to show no freedom, hard work, and no independence. This is bits and pieces of what African Americans had to phase throughout their lives, this is African American History.

I choose this picture because as soon as I saw it, I knew what it a to me in my eyes, and I felt like I got the concept of the picture. I also thought it would be easy to analyze but when I tried it was harder then I thought. I like the picture because of the exaggeration the painter uses; the colors, and I also like that there are many different ways that this picture could be portrayed.