Work and the Image I: Work, Craft and Labour: Visual Representations in Changing Histories

This title was first published in 2000. Work and the Image , published in two volumes, addresses a critical theme in contemporary social and cultural debates whose place in visual representation has been neglected. Ranging from Greek pottery to contemporary performance, and exploring a breadth of geo-national perspectives including those of France, Britain, Hungary, Soviet Russia, the Ukraine, Siberia and Germany, the essays provide a challenging reconsideration of the image of work, the meaning of the work process, and the complex issues around artistic activity as itself a form of work even as it offers a representation of labour. Volume I includes interdisciplinary case studies which plot the changing definitions of work as labour, craft, social relations and a source of historical identity, while analyzing the role of visual representation in their formation and transformation. The diverse essays cover such topics as anti-slavery movements and enunciation of workers’ rights, revolutionary politics, relations of class and gender, industrial masculinities and women’s rural sociality, unemployment and subjectivity, Stalinist aesthetics and nationalist identities.