This photograph by Matt Eich is classic and painterly. It belongs to Eich’s fourth and final volume of work The Invisible Yoke : We, The Free. The photograph feels rooted to tradition and contemporary life. The sky of this rural landscape is flushed rose by the setting sun. A young man leading a pack of hunting dogs turns over his shoulder to whistle for stragglers. This photograph feels like the last frenzy of a long day of toil. The almost-home feeling and the sunset are made sweeter by sounds we may imagine in the scene- the boy’s whistle, the dogs howl, the light breeze on grass tips and branches, the ring of a dinner-bell promised by nightfall. This image feels at first timeless- belonging to the sort of long forgotten life we city-dwellers imagine when we think of the pastoral, early Americana, or even European genre painting. Cues beyond photographic media set us in the present era: a tin can chilled by a koozie, a wristwatch, and compass. Attire and tools have changed little; tasks at hand have changed less. Days, years, decades pass, but some corners of life remain the same as the world spins. We find an earthy comfort in Matt Eich’s image. The photograph is infused with a sense of belonging to legacy. Contemporary life marches on for “the rest of us;” we feel a sense of knowing that what we ascribe to the category ‘a simple life’ is reductive. A gritty uncertainty lingers always on the horizon of circumstance.