As I learned in Sawicki’s Art001, during the Great Depression Walker Evans, sponsored by the federally Funded Farmer’s Security Administration under FDR toured America, photographing scenes of destitution, poverty, and industry (or lack thereof). In this 1935 photograph taken in Bethlehem, Evans evokes a powerful image with his camera by fitting a graveyard, housing block and steel mill into his frame. The black and white gelatin silver print makes a powerful statement on the nature of life in a steel town capturing what one might argue is all there is to life in such a place: first your born (home), then you work (steel mill), and then you die (graveyard).
There’s plenty to unpack in the symbolism, but for the purpose of my project, using Evans’ A Graveyard and a Steel Mill in Bethlehem as my fabric, I am choosing to ascribe the condition of “congregation” to that which we observe foremost, the cemetery. With the housing block remaining a clear choice for the condition of “residence”, the rhetorical decision lies in deciding which of the two settings on either side of the housing block to ascribe the condition of “congregation” to. In the case of the steel mill, the facility serves as the heart of the town which gives life to its citizens through industry; in the case of the graveyard, it is the ultimate unifier of all living things, where all are bound to congregate. In making my decision to use the graveyard to represent the condition of “congregation”, I was guided primarily by my interpretation of Evan’s photograph. To me, the graveyard serves as a location of rest, however morbid, whereas the conflict of contemporary life in poverty, class struggle, and making ends meet through toiling, is embodied in the steel mill. I think that in Evans’ photo, in a bleak reminder of the troubles of depression-era industrial towns, the graveyard serves as the welcome, however reluctantly, end to the tireless cycle of poverty at home, and toiling at work.
Aerial of St. Michael’s 
Steelstacks
St. Michael’s in Autumn
St. Micheal’s during a Blizzard 
St. Micheal’s during a Blizzard
St. Micheal’s in the Summer