Wellness

Initially, the photos of bent trees on the prairie that Jack displays in his first year of art school are regarded as crude, lacking innovation or artistic merit, and outdated due to their use of an obsolete medium. Jack himself can only explain their significance as capturing the power of the wind. However, when Benjamin becomes interested in Jack’s work, the Polaroids prove instrumental in establishing Jack’s short-lived career as an up and coming artist.

In contrast to the Polaroids, Jack’s photographs of computer images depicting women in pornographic poses are an immediate hit—a joke about the modern art world that valorizes what is not actually intentional art. The two sets of photos mirror each other by repeating the same image over and over again, but the “Girl in the Window” series seems evocative and edgy for manipulating a new medium: the internet. But following the acclaim of photographs that aren’t representative of his art is a mistake: When Jack later attempts abstract photography to build on the success of “Girl in the Window,” his photos garner no internet following, harming his teaching career.

As the novel unfolds, however, the true significance of the Polaroids to Jack and their subject become apparent. Jack’s Polaroids of the prairie are influenced by Evelyn’s similar work—a significant detail because it is Evelyn who sparks Jack’s interest in art and serves as his first art teacher. The photos of individual trees echo Evelyn’s photo of a flower that survives the controlled burn—an image she says is symbolic of Jack. Finally, the bent-tree photos are a mournful homage to Evelyn, who dies because the fire set on the prairie is blown by the wind onto the barn where she is working—the power of the wind Jack captures memorializes her death.