Images of Work, Laborers, and the Evolution of Industry Featured in New Ringling Photography Exhibition

August 16, 2023 – Sarasota

The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art (The Ringling) will present “Working Conditions: Exploring Labor through The Ringling’s Photography Collection” August 26, 2023 through March 3, 2024, in the museum’s Searing Wing.

Culled Selected from The Ringling’s extensive collection of photography, the images featured in “Working Conditions” explore and conceptualize labor from the 19th century to present day. The exhibition’s approximately 50 photographs represent a diversity of perspectives on labor, from the belief that it is a manifestation of industrial progress to the concern that it exploits society’s most vulnerable.
Artists in the exhibition include documentary photographer Lewis Hine, whose images of child labor and poor working conditions spurred social change; Soviet-era photographer Dmitiri Baltermants, whose photographs of workers emphasize the nobility of their contributions; and contemporary artist Endia Beal, who explores the ways in which young Black women must navigate often-hostile corporate culture. Other artists of note in “Working Conditions” include Walker Evans, Arthur Rothstein, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Margaret Bourke-White, Danny Lyon, Lewis Baltz, Sebastião Salgado and Bill Owens.

“Working Conditions” is curated by Christopher Jones, The Ringling’s Stanton B. and Nancy W. Kaplan Curator of Photography and Media Arts. His conception of the exhibition was inspired, in part, by recent gifts of Bill Owens photographs to the museum. The Owens photographs areon view for the first time since their donation to The Ringling. They include the artist’s series “Working,” in which Owens portrays people at their jobs during the mid-1970s, considering and explores how the work they perform shapes their identities.

“Owens’ photographs in ‘Working’ astutely capture the visual culture of that era. They present an amusingly tongue-in-cheek approach to the subject matter that is both anthropological and familiar,” explains Jones. “The images in that series provided the initial idea for the exhibition: to explore the myriad ways in which photographs have communicated ideas about labor since the 19th century, and how our concept of work has evolved as the medium has evolved over the decades.”

In addition to considering the complex relationship between labor and identity, “Working Conditions” also offers a metacommentary on the nature of photography itself as a form of labor and production. Photography, which was developed toward the end of the Industrial Revolution, was a result of a process by which a task — in this case, image-making — was made easier by machines. Yet almost as soon as it was conceived, photography also became a medium through which artists could express ideas and explore aesthetic questions. The exhibition acknowledges this duality, presenting a far-reaching selection of work-related photography that examines how labor has been featured throughout the past century of visual culture.

To commemorate Labor Day, Jones will provide a curator-led Gallery Talk of “Working Conditions” on Tuesday, September 5 at 11 a.m. For more information and to reserve tickets, visit www.ringling.org.