Saturday, October 30, 2010

Just Like Chickens

Lawrence Unviersity's curator and gallery director, Frank Lewis, lectured on Wisconsin Labor: A Contemporary Portrait on Friday October 29th 2010. As an exhibition opening, he explained the background information on photography works that captures laborers, and how the view on such subject matters changed over the course of time. I was particularly intrigued by the concept of capturing a person (or people) in labor as an identity vs. capturing a person (or people) in labor as a machine.  In other words, photographers from different periods have had different concepts on human labors, and they have tried to depict what labor means to human beings. What they had in common was that they saw aesthetics in human labors and they intended to tranform what is human sweat and effort into an art called photograph.

File:Lewis Hine Power house mechanic working on steam pump.jpg
Lewis Hine
Power house mechanic working on steam pump, USA1920  
The picture above is a famous photograph taken by Lewis Hine. His works often captured the juxtaposition of mechanics and human beings, and he was strong on his opinions on the blending of the two. As seen in this photography, the curvature of the man's spine traces the shape of a perfect circular curve of the large machine behind him. This gives the illusion that the man in labor is, in fact, a part of this gigantic machinary. He was also very big on documenting the issues of child labor, where he would go to factories where children were abused and taken advantage of with adult privilages. Children working in such settings in his time were, indeed, treated like an object. Loss of identity as a human being was very apparent, as seen throughout his works.
August SanderPastry Cook, Germany, 1928
8 x 10" Silver Print
Posthumous Print
Printed 1996
On the other hand, August Sander's phtography collections focused more on occupation as a self identity. He was a photographer in Germany pre and during World War II. He would go around Germany (more so before the war) to take what defines as Germany by capturing everyday lives (what they do as a job, etc.) of the citizens there. His works were not merely a depiction of a "career" per se, but tells a lot about that person in the portrait's existence, making the photographs personal and specific.
 

Quai de Javel (Ragpickers)
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Quai de Javel (Ragpickers), Paris, 1932
Printed on 11 x 14 inch

Works by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Quai de Javel (Rag Pickers), reminded me of the caste system in India. Like Sander's works, it depicts these men's identity in terms of their placement in the society, but at the same time, the lack of identity of the each individuals in the photo makes it touch the concept of them being a mere workers a whole. In India, people are born with their class and occupation due to their last name that is carried throughout the family from the past.  Though the concept of caste system is slowly vanishing throughout the world, photographs like this makes it apparent that it has always been a big part of the societies in many countries on a global scale.


Edward Burtynsky
Manufacturing #17,
Deda Chicken Processing Plant, Dehui City, Jilin Province, 2005

Finally, the phogoraph above by Edward Burtynsky shows the workers in chicken manufacturing factory in China. With technology advancement, it is inevidable that people in factories are as machine-like as the technologies they use to do the labors. Everyone wearing the same pink clothes, doing the same gestures over and over again... They are no more human-like than the identical chickens being manufactured at the factory. Where did these workers' identity as a human being go?

The below clips is a short snippet of a classic comedy called I Love Lucy, where labor in a factory like the one shown in Burtynsky's photo is made fun of.

2 comments:

  1. My favorite part about the Burtynsky photo is that the workers are wearing pink and blue and I that that serves well to represent the gender anonymity that I assume the artist is also including as part of his message.

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  2. The relationship of the photographer to the subject can not be overlooked. For example, Sander photographed in the area around his home in the Black Forest during the Weimar period whereas Burtynsky travels all over the world, working to gain access to make his expansive "landscapes..."

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