Looking back at my work, I realised I had shown labour through looking out at my surroundings and down at the ground, but I hadn’t thought to look up. Looking up, I noticed labour through powerlines, scaffolding around buildings, and even cranes. For my last work, I went for a walk around Albany with my camera and took videos of cranes through my perspective from the ground, focusing on the labour above and including my noticing through a couple reflections in glass and water. I was interested in conveying the idea that there is a lot of labour around us that we often just don’t see because we are busy or moving around, or it isn’t in immediate sight. So the slow movement of the cranes captured in still video shots makes the viewer pause and really notice the work taking place, including the sounds from the labour and the environment it is situated in. It made me think – I wonder how much labour goes on around us that is hidden/out of our sight completely? If I were to continue my work, perhaps this would be my next challenge to explore.
Reflection
Throughout the Downtime brief I explored the idea of observing labour through different perspectives. In the last couple weeks, this evolved into a way of noticing and appreciating the work that goes on outside around our communities everyday. My work, therefore, was about making others notice labour through my own noticing, encouraging the viewer to take a moment to not only see but to recognize the labour around them.
I enjoyed exploring this idea through the lens and going on adventures with my camera, and I found it really interesting experimenting with making videos. There are soo many creative ways to use a camera! I’m looking forward to learning so much more and exploring ideas next year 🙂
In terms of the idea of observing/witnessing labour, I just wanted to note that I don’t mean for it to come across as voyeuristic in any way. Rather, I am trying to convey the idea of seeing and noticing labour in a way that reminds people to be aware and acknowledge the labour around us that helps us everyday. I intend to focus on noticing labour from a place of care, to appreciate some of the work in the community that is often taken for granted, and I hope this comes through in my work.
Challenge #1 – Separation & distance
One of my challenges was to find another way to show labour through distance, by creating a sense of separation between the labour and myself or the viewer. I thought about windows – I find it’s interesting that while they open up our view of the outside, windows are also a barrier. I took some images from inside our window looking out onto the street, capturing moments where delivery vans or posties were stopping by from a distance. I wanted to show the idea that labour is happening around us all of the time, including when we are at home, and we may not always see or notice the work but it has a direct impact on our days and how we live. Perhaps during lockdown, while staying at home, people have found a greater understanding for how much we all depend on the essential services in day-to-day life.
(Unfortunately I can’t display the image sequence larger so it is a bit hard to see)
Challenge #2 – Where am I, and what do I see?
My other challenge was to find a way to insert myself into the work, like a way of involving myself as an observer. I was interested in how I could do this using my shadow, and I decided to try film the ground in front of me as I walked the length of the local village shops. My feet appear in the video and every now and again so does my shadow, showing my involvement and interaction with the place at that time. But the focus of the video is more on the sound and what appears on the pavement. Without being able to see my actual surroundings, the viewer interprets the scene in their own way – and I was interested in how this video could imply the idea of labour. What might the viewer experience or notice in this unusual perspective of an everyday setting – maybe the food store signs, the shadows of banners, the sound and shadow of a garbage truck, or the post box? The video doesn’t represent what I was able to notice directly through seeing – so I wonder what signs of labour may be noticed by the viewer through listening and seeing it from a different perspective.
Duane Michals is an artist well known for his work with photographic sequences and unique ways of storytelling through the lens. I’m interested in the way his sequences make the viewer really notice the idea or subject matter, as each image shows something that is clearly different to the previous photo by introducing, changing or taking away an element. I was thinking about this as I looked at his work ‘I Built a Pyramid’ (1978), which shows him stacking a pyramid out of rocks in front of the Egyptian pyramids. Duane Michals cleverly makes viewers really notice by capturing movements or something that has occurred over a substantial length of time and then showing them as a short series of images – almost like summaries of the actions or events that took place. This means each image in a series contains a significantly noticeable difference, allowing the viewer to fill in the gaps themselves. He also takes photos from a single, still viewpoint, and this emphasises the changes that occur.
Duane Michals sequences have a direct impact on the viewer by making us actively notice, imagine and think, showing that sequencing can be a really engaging way of formatting and presenting photographs. I’m inspired to see how I can create a shorter sequence in my work as a way of observing labour and making people acknowledge the labour that keeps our communities going.
I was interested in seeing ways that artists incorporate shadows and reflections into lens-based work as I would like to further experiment with these elements to indirectly observe or show labour. I had a look around Circuit to find inspiration, and came across Sonya Lacey and Ziggy Lever’s video works!
Sonya Lacey’s ‘Newspaper for Vignelli’ 2010 (https://www.circuit.org.nz/film/newspaper-for-vignelli) shows newspaper floating across the ground, casting shadows that dance on the concrete. I like the way the camera travels too, following the movement of the newspaper and shadows. This work made me think about different perspectives, and the way that shifting or redirecting our focus can change what we notice. I’m inspired by the use of shadows as an indirect way of viewing something. We often forget to look at our shadows, but I think it’s interesting to think about them as something like a bond between us and our environment, like a reminder that our bodies are connected to the world outside and the places we go.
I was really interested in the way Ziggy explores reflections and perspectives in his videos. His works ‘Driving behind a very animated tree’ 2015 (https://www.circuit.org.nz/film/driving-behind-a-very-animated-tree) and ‘Driving down Scott Rd looking for weeds’ 2014 (https://www.circuit.org.nz/film/driving-down-scott-rd-looking-for-weeds) were filmed from his vehicle, and I was reminded of my exploration of photographing from the car. I really like the use of reflection in the moving scene in ‘Driving down Scott Rd looking for weeds’, and the way the reflections re-capture what has already been seen or travelled through but from a new perspective – therefore capturing the past. The perspective of filming from a vehicle interests me because in a strange way it makes the viewer feel like they could be there, witnessing the view from the car. It creates a real sense of looking and observing, which is something I am trying to convey through my work in relation to noticing the labour around us.
Mierle Laderman Ukeles is an artist who turned the work of maintenance into art. Her frustration at inequalities in labour and the struggles she faced in dividing herself between the roles of artist and mother led her to create ‘Manifesto for Maintenance Art 1969’. The manifesto compares the systems of development and maintenance, showing how society values and praises development while maintenance – the work that sustains life and is essential to our living – is more likely to go unappreciated, unnoticed, underpaid or unpaid. She also introduced her proposal for an exhibition called ‘Care’, in which maintenance work would be displayed as contemporary art. It was outlined to take place in 3 parts – “personal maintenance, general societal maintenance, and earth maintenance.”
10 years ago, Mierle Laderman Ukeles stated that “this manifesto is a world vision and a call for revolution for the workers of maintenance, for these are the workers of survival and sustainability. Look around, thats most of the people in the whole world.” I felt so engaged by Mierle Laderman Ukele’s manifesto, as it is still so significant now as it was 52 years ago when she wrote it. Sociopolitical issues surrounding labour are at the core of her work and she highlights these as she calls for people to acknowledge, appreciate and value maintenance work and the people who do it.
Mierle Laderman Ukeles’s commitment to her work has been lifelong, and she has stayed in the offical role of artist in residence at the NYC Department of Sanitation since 1978. I’m particularly interested in her performance work ‘Touch Sanitation’, during which the artist met over 8,500 employees of the sanitation department. With each worker, she shook their hand and thanked them for keeping New York City alive. She listened to their stories, shadowed them as they worked and documented it all through photographs, writings and other media to make the workers seen and change negative public perceptions of them. This work operated to not only make the public notice maintenance labour, but to really acknowledge and value it and see the people behind the work.
I think the ideas behind Mierle’s work relate to my work and I’m especially inspired by the ideas in her manifesto. I want to find ways to make people to look around and take notice of maintenance labour, developing a sense of care in thinking about and appreciating these kinds of labour in our communities.
I have thought a lot about the fact that it is impossible to actually understand a form of labour without having experienced it directly, firsthand. It brought me to a question – how could I ever represent labour and what it feels like to go through labour in an image? If I cannot understand a labour that I have never experienced, then how could I possibly understand it through a photograph?
Throughout my work, I have been interested in the idea of witnessing or observing labour from an ‘outside’ perspective, and I have decided to explore how I can show the idea of labour through an image without really showing labour itself. This means finding indirect ways of viewing labour through the lens – ways that don’t try to examine or ‘represent’ labour, but ways that focus on the observance of the viewer. Often we don’t remember to notice all the labour that goes into keeping us happy, safe, and healthy every day, so in my work I want to seek ways of taking photographs that remind people of the labour that happens around them (such as labour which they may not have experienced, or are not really aware of). I think it would be an interesting challenge to find ways to make the viewer (and myself too) re-notice the significance of labour, through the experience of observing in a different way.
Taking Notice
I wanted to start exploring this last phase of the brief by noticing labour in the community and surrounding neighbourhoods which I frequently travel through. I thought about walking around my neighbourhood with my camera, but I was a little nervous about taking photos of people in busy public areas. So instead I went for a drive to different places and stopped to take photos from my car. It felt a bit weird, like I was a spy, but when I stopped it also gave me a moment to look around and notice all the labour around me. I noticed a lot more than I often would, and felt especially aware of the essential work that runs constantly to keep our communities going. I think that when we go places, we look at the things around us, but it can be easy to not consciously take in all that we see.
I decided to only take photos from inside my car, finding angles through the windows and mirrors which was sometimes challenging! Taking photos from the car, however, carried across the idea of being an observer from a relatable and common viewpoint. I could show labour from more of a candid perspective (rather than direct or staged) and experiment with reflections. My aim was to capture images in public, everyday settings that say to the viewer “I want you to notice something”, and to make the viewer really look at what they see.
The supermarket carpark. What do you notice?
I recorded a video too, which emphasises the labour as nearly everything is still except for the forklift. I like the way that in moments of pause, you become more aware of what you hear as well as what you can see. Videoing this made me think about noticing the sounds of labour.
Placing labour in the forefront of the image – the viewer is forced to notice and become aware of the signs of labour, even if trying to look at the beach.
These next photos were taken from the passenger seat when I went out in my Dad’s car, and I got to look around and take photos while he was driving. The tinted windows add a filter to the photos, as well as some reflections, creating a sense of observing from a kind of separation between the viewer and the labour. Taking photos of road construction made me realise that we often drive past it so quickly that the labour that goes into it doesn’t receive much attention. Being able to capture some moments clearly, perhaps, can allow the viewer to recognise this labour which is so important and even enables us to drive.
Taking these photos from the car was a very interesting experience! My favourites were the supermarket ones as I like the way they show a subtle way of noticing. As I continue, I’m keen to explore video more as I think it’s interesting to work with the idea of noticing sound in labour as well as sight. I am also thinking about different perspectives I could explore and how I could try sequencing photos.
As I continued to explore labour through witnessing, I was interested in photographing the neighbouring construction site through the fence. This represents my perspective of observing the labour that takes place next door and the traces of it, as I have only ever seen the construction site by looking through something (such as a fence or barrier). As a result, my images only show small, blurry slices of what is being built, and there are no people in them – showing that I can try to see what the labour is or looks like, but I will never know or understand the labour of the workers and how it feels, unless I experience it myself. This also goes for viewers who look at the fragmented and disjointed assembly of photographs, as it’s difficult to truly understand the scene.
I was interested in using collage to align the vertical lines in my images to create an overall picture, like the viewer is looking through the fence. As I was editing, I thought about Daniel Crooks sliced photographs which assemble different images of the same place into one image. I like the way he does this by combining vertical strips of images (as seen in his video work ‘Static No. 17 (algorithm P)’ https://ocula.com/institutions/the-centre-for-contemporary-photography/artworks/daniel-crooks/static-no-17-algorithm-p-(2)/) – they almost looks like portals into different moments in time, looking like a glimpse into the past, present and future all at once. I found inspiration from these vertical structures and collage techniques in his work which create a new way of looking through time.
But in terms of my own work, I find it kind of strange – I think its because I don’t really like the look of it, but I like the idea and the way the collage brings together different images to form a wider perspective. I realised that it also creates a new way of looking – a way of looking through the fence that is not actually possible in real life, but it is made possible through the lens and by way of collage. As I continue, I am really interested in expanding to thinking more about the viewer’s experience in witnessing labour, rather than my own.
Hiroshi Sugimoto’s photography investigates memory and time, particularly through long exposure. He is interested in exploring the way that photographs can alter and obscure reality, the idea that what we look at in an image is not always ‘true’. I really like his ‘drive-in theatres’ series, which show long exposures of outdoor movies against the dark sky. These black and white images pick up streaks of light in the sky from planes, showing the passing of time in a single image. It reminds me of the way that when we watch movies, we can become so engaged in them that we forget about the world outside and the constant movement and pace of life, as time seems to flow into an immeasurable state.
Hiroshi Sugimoto once said that “[p]hotography is a system of saving memories. It’s a time machine, in a way, to preserve the memory, to preserve time,” which I find fascinating to think about. The ideas in his work make me think about how photography is almost like a superpower in the way that it allows us to see things that the eye naturally cannot, creating new ways of seeing things that are happening around us by transforming the invisible into visible form. It makes makes me wonder about how we perceive time, and the relationship between time and light. In my work, perhaps I could explore using a slow shutter speed to show duration of time in a single shot.
I’m also interested in his photographs which are intentionally blurred, such as ‘Eiffel Tower’ 1998. His interest was in “erosion-testing architecture for durability,” to see if buildings could still be determined by the eye even when the view is distorted. I am interested in the deliberate use of blur, and the way I could possibly use it to show an indirect observation of labour in my work.
Sophie Callie is interested in people and narratives, uncovering and telling stories through her works which are often exhibited alongside text. Her works “can be seen as a chapter in a vast overall volume of references and echoes, in which Calle often blurs the boundaries between the intimate and the public, reality and fiction, art and life.” Sometimes she is described as a detective for the way that she investigates realities and people, as she did in her project called ‘The Hotel’ in the 1980’s. Calle took photographs for these works when she was working as a chambermaid in a Venetian hotel. In the rooms she cleaned, she would photograph the guest’s belongings and look through their personal items, observing the lives of strangers through what she found.
While this is totally voyeuristic and concerns me a bit, I think its interesting in the way that she has indirectly observed people, documenting their belongings rather than the people themselves. It makes me think about the meaning in what we own, in how we treat our environment, in how we do things, in the traces we leave, and what it says about who we are individually. In my work, I would like to explore how I can show labour in my photographs without directly photographing labour. Taking inspiration from Sophie Calle’s form of documentation, I think I might try photographing ‘traces’ of labour, such as objects and sites/places which are involved with labour.
I was interested in documenting labour through a new perspective (such as a mirror, shadow or window) to find a new, slightly indirect way of looking at it. I decided to film me and my Dad as we installed blinds in my window, with the camera outside and looking in. This makes the viewer feel like an observer or witness, perhaps even focusing the video more on the viewer than the people doing the labour. It makes me think about how people respond to labour, how do we view labour in general, and in our everyday lives? I was interested in the idea of a window as an opening to the world outside, yet the way it also stands as a barrier between the viewer and the labour in this video. For example, the sound of the labour is partially muted, and the reflections in the window confuse life outside with life inside. Perhaps this comments on the way that people can never really feel or understand certain kinds of labour if they have never experienced it themselves.
I think it would be interesting to continue this idea of witnessing or observing labour through different perspectives in my work to explore people’s relationship with labour.
I got a black and white roll of film developed the other day, but due to a malfunction with my camera’s shutter speed almost all the photos turned out extremely blurry and overexposed… soo this was definitely a bit of a sad moment, BUT I still thought some images looked kind of interesting, with a shadowy/ghostly look about them. I hadn’t planned on using these photos for the brief, but I thought perhaps they show labour in the way that all this effort had been put into buying the film, taking the photos, developing the film and scanning it, only to produce photos that aren’t really visible! This highlights the element of risk or fragility in labour which I find interesting. I sequenced the images in vertical rows in reference to rolls of film, which I also think is quite pleasing to look at. I would be keen to explore some ideas with film in this brief as I really like working with this more manual process. It would be cool to make an animation with it too! Or to alter the process in some way? I also think taking photographs on film could maybe have a closer connection to labour itself than using a digital camera.
#2 – Folding
This sequence focuses on the labour involved in care, as well as the idea of repetition. I took photos as I folded and re-stacked some clothes in my parents wardrobe, because I thought it would be just a nice thing to do. I think I’ve been quite unaware of the incredible amount of effort and labour my mum has put into doing my family’s washing throughout my life, and I feel I haven’t appreciated this enough. So it felt good to surprise her by doing just this very tiny thing! I organised the images of the stacked clothes in a stacked horizontal sequence, with the images almost merging into each other. This emphasises the structure of the grids in the wardrobe and the idea of repetition. It’s hard to tell where each image begins and ends, which kind of relates to the idea that washing is a continuous or never-ending labour in day-to-day life.
#3 – Planting
My final sequence explores gardening as a rewarding form of labour, but also a potentially risky labour too. We haven’t always had the best luck in our veggie garden, due to many things (-including snails and birds, to not enough light or water, or maybe because our dog likes to trample it and our cats like to poo in it). But aside from that, it has actually been doing pretty good lately! Anyway, I wanted to show in my images this idea of putting labour into something that may not have a certain or predictable outcome. I photographed myself planting basil from a tripod, however I think this ended up looking too much like a step-by-step planting tutorial. If I were to do something like this again I would try taking photos from different angles or distances to be more creative with it. I also think my hands look like the main focus in these images, but in a way this is quite interesting because it shows the movement of the hands as an important part in the labour.
For my first animation I kept it quite simple and drew tally marks with chalk on a blackboard. I was thinking about repetition and ways that people measure time and labour, inspired by the way Tehching Hsieh recorded the passage of time through repeated images in his ‘Time Clock Piece’. Tallying is a commonly used way of counting and recording, but it’s interesting how we can represent an hour, a day, or even a year with a single stroke, like the effort or time that went into something can be reduced to a small symbol. I think tallying also indicates labour as it is often used to record an action or labour of some kind. The animation seems to show a sense of futility in repetition and in the fact that we have no idea what the tally is recording… I suppose it is open to interpretation.
#2 – Labour in motion
For my second animation I wanted to investigate physical labour of the body in the context of daily life, as well as experiment with creating motion from a series of still images. I carried my camera facing down by my hip and set it to take a photo per second as I walked outside to my letterbox and back – observing labour in moving my body and travelling. This short walk doesn’t seem like something that involves a lot of labour, however, I think we don’t often recognise just how much our bodies do for us or appreciate the everyday movements they allow us to do. To emphasise this idea, I angled the camera directly downwards, seeing the motion of walking from a perspective which we normally wouldn’t focus on. However, I think my animation looks disconnected and unclear, and overall I don’t think it shows the ideas effectively, but I would like to continue exploring motion and the body in my work.
#3 – Labour in sitting still
In contrast to my last animation, I thought it could be interesting to explore stillness. I photographed myself sitting outside on my deck for a few minutes as I challenged myself to sit still – something I find quite difficult to do! I wondered if there would be labour in keeping myself still, highlighting mental labour and perhaps the fact that our minds continue thinking and processing in stillness (even when we sleep, we dream). I decided to contrast this form of mental labour and stillness against the setting, which shows physical labour in the neighbouring construction site with a digger operating and the continual movement of life in our surroundings such as clouds and trees etc. While I found it hard to not move as I was sitting, I eventually found myself embracing the time I had to give my body a break. I thought about how we barely take the time to just be still.
