Gezicht op de American Watch Factory in Waltham, Massachusetts before 1879

This albumen print, dating to around 1870, by Thomas R. Lewis, depicts the American Watch Factory in Waltham, Massachusetts. Photography, like watchmaking, was a child of industrialization. Both were enabled by advances in manufacturing and standardization. Consider the material processes at play here. Albumen prints were made using glass negatives, itself a chemically intensive process. The image was then printed on paper coated with albumen, derived from egg whites, giving the final print a distinctive sheen and tonal range. Photography was thus deeply entwined with material transformations, and with the labor required to produce these materials. The watch factory itself was a monument to precision manufacturing, where interchangeable parts and assembly-line techniques were pioneered. This image, therefore, isn't just a depiction of a factory, but a complex layering of industrial processes, captured through the alchemical magic of photography. It reminds us that even seemingly straightforward images are the product of extensive material and social histories.