Here are the railway tracks that run past MIT. They run perpendicular to Mass Ave, where the camera was located.

Notice how the spatial frequency content of the image of periodic railway ties (pattern of wood to stones, back to wood again) increases toward the vanishing point (where the frequency is infinity, in, say, units of railway ties per pixel).

If you look carefully you can probably find an artist. He's wearing a white cap, and he has an easel set up in front of him. The painting captures a spectacular view of the nuclear reactor cooling towers to the right of the tracks.