This is the most odd post I've read in quite a while.
I was going to reply defending the subject of the article -- a middle-class person with hobbies and a home who fell on some temporary bad luck and was pounded into the ground by an objectively bad confluence of policies. But then I realized you think blue and red pigments are symbols of extravagance, and even in 1905 I'd be pretty lost on how to reply to that...?
No, I don't. I wonder why one person is made to look like she's living an extravagant lifestyle, and the other just this side of privation. I'm not a professional photographer, just an amateur - and if I did that, I wouldn't have done it by accident. I see no reason to imagine a professional would do it by accident, either. You don't take just one photo and call it good, after all. You take a lot of them, and then you sort through them to choose the ones you publish. The question I'm asking is: why choose these?
I think I'm seeing a deliberate attempt to manipulate the reader's sympathies, is what I'm saying. I don't understand what purpose that would serve, but I think it must have been done to serve some purpose, and so I wonder what purpose that was.
I was going to reply defending the subject of the article -- a middle-class person with hobbies and a home who fell on some temporary bad luck and was pounded into the ground by an objectively bad confluence of policies. But then I realized you think blue and red pigments are symbols of extravagance, and even in 1905 I'd be pretty lost on how to reply to that...?