[Construction Site] 1880s

Louis Lafon captured this photograph, Construction Site, at the end of the nineteenth century, when industrialization was rapidly transforming the French landscape. Look closely and you'll see a skeletal structure teeming with workers, each a tiny figure against the immensity of iron and glass. There's a tension here between progress and the human cost of that progress. The photograph romanticizes the worker while simultaneously recording the dangerous conditions of the construction site. Think about these men, their labor, and their lives; caught between the weight of girders and the promise of a modern future. Lafon, who died so young, leaves us with an image that is both a celebration of human ingenuity and a stark reminder of its cost. It invites us to reflect on the lives and labor that built the world around us.