King's Weir, River Lea c. 1880s

Peter Henry Emerson made this photogravure titled "King's Weir, River Lea" in England at the end of the 19th century. Emerson was known for advocating naturalistic photography, and the image evokes the aesthetic of ruralist nostalgia. The River Lea was a site of working-class recreation and labor and had become visibly polluted, so this picture is an example of the selective vision of a middle-class photographer. Emerson's work invites us to consider whose experiences are being foregrounded, and whose are being ignored. The image is a cultural construct, not a mirror of reality. The social conditions that shape artistic production are always complex. We need to look into the popular press, census records, and public health reports of the time to understand the relationship between this photograph and the broader social context in which it was made.