Nathan Baker

People at Work

June 7, 2007 - June 30, 2007

In People at Work Nathan Baker’s photographs address the double nature of labor at all levels of the social hierarchy – a round of tasks, often with no satisfying meaning, and a field for the exercise of aptitudes. By composing digital photographs that compact the varied tasks of individual workers into a single frame, Baker seeks to communicate simultaneously the frenzied tedium of a wide variety of occupations and the intensity of effort that people put into them. The result in each case is a concentrated look at a person at work that conveys both a sense of frantic alienation and an amazement at the feats performed by workers in what are often considered the most ordinary, routine and undemanding occupations.