Gezicht op een rivier te Sleepy Hollow en een gezicht op een beek te Sleepy Hollow before 1887

This photographic print, titled "Gezicht op een rivier te Sleepy Hollow en een gezicht op een beek te Sleepy Hollow," was created by J.L. Williams. The composition of this image draws our attention to institutional and cultural contexts by reminding us of the nineteenth-century picturesque aesthetic. The Hudson River School was known for romanticizing landscapes, particularly in the Hudson River Valley. By the time this image was made, Sleepy Hollow's association with Washington Irving's Legend of Sleepy Hollow would have made it a prime subject for such romanticization. The way the photographs are presented, cut and pasted onto a page in an album, reinforces the idea of Sleepy Hollow as a readymade tourist destination. As historians, we need to research tourist photography and its relationship to American identity, to understand the way this image participates in the construction of both. Ultimately, the meaning of this artwork is contingent on the social and cultural context in which it was made and consumed.