This is part of my Sinister Idyll series showing the pastoral landscapes that cover over the history of slavery. This cornfield has a double meaning - it was here that the infamous trio of cigars with Lee's General Orders #2, the march on Antietam, were discovered by a Union forager.
IDK how it fits w/ the rest of the series, but I think the color is good and fits this well. The clouds are great. The missing 2 inches to the base of the stalks causes a kind of disconcerting uneasy dissonance, like a startled glance up by the Union forager as something/someone is about to emerge. Seems to me that it fits your "sinister" theme masterfully! Actually, I honestly don't like what it evokes and wouldn't want it on my wall.... which makes it a powerful image in it's way.
@NedL That's where the Sinister comes in- without the background knowledge of the scene (farmland planted and harvested by the blood, sweat and tears of slaves), this would be an ordinary cornfield. Knowing that it has not only that under-story but the Civil War battlefield story as well (the farm was used as an encampment by both Union and Confederate soldiers more than once during the course of the war, and then saw direct combat in 1864 during Jubal Early's attempted invasion of Washington DC) gives those corn stalks an entirely different feel. The series is just beginning - I have posted some of the others before, as just negative scans. There's one that shows the summer kitchen/bachelor's quarters on the property, with gently rolling fields behind it. The fields behind are the site of the slave cabins (no longer standing) that housed some seventy individuals many of whom were kept not for manual labor but for breeding purposes. I'm going to be exploring other properties in the area that were slave operated and documenting them in similar fashion.