Every now and again an experience (sometimes large, sometimes small) comes along that presents an opportunity for reflection and makes entirely unexpected connections. Much is always made about being prepared for the expected as well as the unexpected, but in these cases the reflection is driven by a complete lack of expectation and a surprise about something completely new.
A one-day visit to Lowell, on a dreary, lonely weekend was a case in point. It was not a complete surprise, I confess: I had been advised by a colleague that the town might be of interest, but had not taken the advice seriously. I thus embarked on the drive to Lowell for lack of something better to do, thinking about the absent family as I drove my way through the rain. As it turned out, this was fertile ground fora short trip to a set which had come almost directly out of what I had seen previously in the north of England: a 19th century industrial town, red brick, built on canals and harnessing the power of the river to run the mills and ignite the capitalist spark. A National Park, no less, documenting a (mostly) well-preserved heritage that had (in some cases literally) been transported straight from Victorian England to the New World.
Apart from the photographic vein that yielded much more than I had expected, and apart from the heartstrings that were pulled that day as I thought of England, the trip had provided me with raw material that subsequently required substantial time to work through. The photographic element was rather straightforward: with the weather that day alternating been grey and drizzly, and the heritage sites generally cloaked in similar colour schemes (brick, steel, oil, wood), putting together a unified set of images was not a big challenge. The pictures themselves, however, and the wholly unanticipated nature of the experience (initially small, but expanding), still have me thinking about leaving room for unexpectedness on weekends to come.
Lowell 2018 : 126/365