THE WORKERS

The Workers is a conceptual and thematic extension/ bookend to The Neighbors series. However, I’m no longer shooting from the studio, but am out in the world recording details of people engaged in manual labor. The same techniques and palette have been applied as The Neighbors, but unlike the private lives and leisure time spent in the interiors of luxury apartments, here I’m examining the nuances of another form of human activity, manual labor. Whereas in The Neighbors we see people napping, dining or staring at their digital devices, in The Workers we see hands, elbows, backs and shoulders in evident concentration on a physical activity.

I’ve used an oval as the framing format to signify a window without referring to traditional rectangular shapes. Also, the oval references the convention used in Old Masters portraiture to designate status, an attribute not often tied to those who work with their hands. Within this designated space I seek to portray eloquence in the face of brittle conditions, of the beauty and delicacy of a hand in motion hovering over an unseen machine or of a body in exhausted repose.