levelling the Road with a Roller 1910 - 1913

This photograph, "Leveling the Road with a Roller," probably taken with a large format camera, shows us road construction somewhere far away and long ago. What strikes me is the surface of the road itself; it looks so crumbly. The photograph has this muted, sepia tone, and there's something about the way the light falls on the gravel that makes it seem almost touchable. Look at the way the road roller has sunk into the ground. I can almost feel the resistance of the earth. In a way, the picture is all about mark-making and pressure, how the weight of this enormous vehicle changes the landscape. You know, it reminds me a little of some of the early landscape photography, people like Carleton Watkins, maybe. There’s a similar attention to texture and detail. But this image also feels like a record of labor, of human effort. It’s about progress, in a way, but it also captures a moment in time, a fleeting interaction between technology and the earth.