Alienating Exposures: Photographing the Activity of Labor

Abstract

This article considers the way that two photographers working very much within the North American documentary tradition established by the Farm Security Administration of the 1930s, captured the labor of migrant agricultural workers in the 1950s and the 1980s. Reading Life photographer Michael Rougier’s images, I argue that his experimental techniques, such as double exposure and unusual camera angles, enabled him to do more than make visible the reality of migrant labor. These devices destabilize a comfortable, easy understanding of the photographs. They compel us to look at them, rather than just give them a leisurely glance. By making us look, these photographs play with the representability of the worker. The practice of creating these photographs is comparable with the alienation of labor. Insofar as the worker is separated from the commodity she produces—and ultimately from herself—likewise the camera separates out a framed moment from the flow of time, abstracting it and enabling the reproduction of images. Comparing Rougier's archive with an exhibit by Philip Decker, I argue that the camera can be used to capture the alienation of labor, exposing the exploitation that capitalist modes of production normally obscure.