Gezicht op een park te Lowell by Anonymous

Gezicht op een park te Lowell before 1892

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Artwork details

Medium
photography
Dimensions
height 103 mm, width 184 mm
Copyright
Rijks Museum: Open Domain

Tags

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pictorialism

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landscape

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photography

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park

About this artwork

This black and white photograph captures North Common, a park in Lowell, Massachusetts, though the photographer remains unknown. The image is meticulously composed, likely using a large format camera, and highlights the way industrialization shapes leisure. The image shows a neatly arranged green space, with rows of trees and walkways offering a structured escape from the nearby mills. Parks like North Common were deliberately designed; they offered a respite from the factory's regimented labor and the city's polluted environment, and were a response to the social issues of the industrial revolution. Photography itself, with its chemical processes and mechanical precision, was deeply intertwined with industrial progress, and should be considered as a craft, and the photographer's work, like that of the mill workers, was part of the larger economic system. This image reminds us that even leisure is manufactured, and that all making – whether of photographs or parks – has a social context.

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