Ways of (not) seeing work: the visual as a blind spot in WES?

NOTTINGHAM (England); ENGLAND

The Work, Employment and Society conference held in Nottingham, England during September 2001 attracted over 320 delegates from all over the world who attended some 200 papers organized into a dozen streams. One of the most popular and well attended of these streams was entitled "Representations of Labor," which spanned six sessions over the first two days of the event. Of the papers in these sessions, seven made use of visual aspects of work and employment through a variety of media. The range of work in this area was captured in one session that included a paper from researcher Carol Wolkowitz on photographing work, a second presentation combining a photographer who worked with a poet, and a final discussion by researcher Vivian Price, a U.S. filmmaker who showed a video on the portrayal of female construction workers. During the conference a popular exhibition was staged of artist Sebastiao Salgado's work from salgado's "Terra: Struggle of the Landless" collection alongside an installation by artists Kay Syrad and Gordon MacDonald entitled "Making Work Visible."