Sandstone Quarry Possibly 1890 - 1908

Auguste-Louis Lepère made this print, Sandstone Quarry, in France, at the end of the 19th century, using etching. It depicts laborers extracting stone from the earth. Lepère was deeply interested in the lives of ordinary people. He shows the labor of these men in the quarry, with an eye to their relationship to the environment. The print gives us a snapshot of French industry and its relationship to the rural landscape. It’s not a glorified view. Instead, it shows the hard work involved in wresting building materials from the earth. How does this impact their lives? Are they well compensated? Are they fairly treated? To fully understand this image, we might research the conditions of quarry workers in France during the late 1800s. We can ask what the labor and environmental laws were at the time, and consider the social and economic structures that governed their work. The artwork opens a window into a specific historical moment.