Gezicht op een park te Lowell before 1892

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.