Workers Dreaming, 1999-ongoing
"Hell begins with the idea that things can be made better.
Paradise is rest, isn’t it? Repose. You go to paradise after you’ve worked
three shifts running, twenty-four hours without a break.
You stop and there’s the pure pleasure of stopping, doing nothing, lying down." – John Berger
Workers Dreaming is a series of large color photographs of workers with their eyes closed. While the workers' eyes are closed in my photographs, they see and know their situation intimately. Denying us their gaze but offering us a meditative space, they are empowered, lost in their own imaginings, desires, hopes and self-consciousness. Workers dreaming are everywhere I go and the project includes workers in France, Cuba, Italy, Japan, Mexico, and the United States. These photographs come from my deep respect for labor and those who perform it and who are often under-recognized, under-paid, and unnoticed. I have been a waitress, a chambermaid, a cashier, and am now an educator, artist and activist. I have marched with farm workers across North Carolina for their rights to organize and for a fair wage. Workers Dreaming was initially inspired by my trip across country as a photographer's assistant to Joel Sternfeld for his book On This Site. We were seeking photographs of the banal where something tragic had occurred: where Karen Silkwood was run off the Oklahoma road; where a boy was slain in a drive-by shooting; where a doctor who provided abortions was shot. Everywhere, we met workers who were willing to help us. My workers are not "historical" in the conventional sense, but it does not take tragedy to make history, it takes work.
"Hell begins with the idea that things can be made better.
Paradise is rest, isn’t it? Repose. You go to paradise after you’ve worked
three shifts running, twenty-four hours without a break.
You stop and there’s the pure pleasure of stopping, doing nothing, lying down." – John Berger
Workers Dreaming is a series of large color photographs of workers with their eyes closed. While the workers' eyes are closed in my photographs, they see and know their situation intimately. Denying us their gaze but offering us a meditative space, they are empowered, lost in their own imaginings, desires, hopes and self-consciousness. Workers dreaming are everywhere I go and the project includes workers in France, Cuba, Italy, Japan, Mexico, and the United States. These photographs come from my deep respect for labor and those who perform it and who are often under-recognized, under-paid, and unnoticed. I have been a waitress, a chambermaid, a cashier, and am now an educator, artist and activist. I have marched with farm workers across North Carolina for their rights to organize and for a fair wage. Workers Dreaming was initially inspired by my trip across country as a photographer's assistant to Joel Sternfeld for his book On This Site. We were seeking photographs of the banal where something tragic had occurred: where Karen Silkwood was run off the Oklahoma road; where a boy was slain in a drive-by shooting; where a doctor who provided abortions was shot. Everywhere, we met workers who were willing to help us. My workers are not "historical" in the conventional sense, but it does not take tragedy to make history, it takes work.
