(Public Square - 1900)

John Henry Harper

A tonal photograph of a public square in 1900 by John Henry Harper, about whom little can be found. He was allegedly a 19th century Boston photographer but this does not look like Copely Square or any Boston square we can find.

Despite a lack of information on the artist, this platinum print by Boston-based John Henry Harper is no less a masterpiece of early photographic arts. A gathering of onlookers appears to bear witness to a lecture or oration in a town square, whose surrounding elegant architecture suggests a prosperous metropolitan hub. Above the crowd looms heavy, dark rainclouds; beyond what appears to be a state building, an opening in the dreary weather allows for a shifting light to filter through; and just beyond that, the brightly illuminated, billowing form of a freshly passed - or approaching - wave in the storm. The commanding sense of depth and passage of time is wrought in a single fleeting moment, distilling with certainty the keen sense of composition of the artist and the power of photography in general.