How Labour Activism changed the landscape of post-war USA

Since World War II, the United States has profited off war and conflict, its foreign policy grist for the military industrial complex over the past 80 years. But what of the Americans labouring at home, struggling to survive a system that manufactures poverty and foments class divide? This question lies at the heart of American Job: 1940 – 2011 now on view at the International Center of Photography in New York.

Featuring more than 130 photographs, photo books, and ephemera from over 40 photographers including Gordon Parks, Mary Ellen Mark, Louis Stettner, Ken Light, Susan Meiselas, and Bruce Davidson, American Job explores complex relationship between photography, media, politics, labour, and social change between 1940 – 2011. The exhibition begins in a time of hope as emerging pictures magazines like Life and Look showcased heroic stories of the working class communities by Farm Security Administration photographers Jack Delano, John Vachon, and Russell Lee. 

“The media had a role in American life that it doesn’t have anymore,” says guest curator Makeda Best, photography historian and Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Oakland Museum of California. ​“I was really interested in how photography is changing its approaches, contexts, platforms, production and distribution methods, and the role of the photographer. They couldn’t do everything through the media, so they released their own books.”

At a time when photography was largely excluded from the provenance of fine art, visionaries like Danny Lyon turned to their own backyards to document insidious government practices like eminent domain in his seminal 1967 monograph, The Destruction of Lower Manhattan, which is featured prominently in the show. Lyon, who worked alongside the Civil Rights Movement as a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, used photography as a tool to speak truth to power.

“Dr King understood that,” says Best, who points to photographs made during the 1963 March on Washington and the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign. ​“You’ll see the way these unknown photographers were embedded in the Movement, and how they are using photography to speak about these events.”

But with the rise of neoliberalism in the ​’80s, the empire struck back, planting the seeds for oligarchy under the leadership of Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump. In a section titled ​“Everyday Life of the Servant Classes”, Best observes the seeds of the present day taking root. ​“It’s a real turning away from the idea of labour as community, and that working with your hands is personally enriching and gratifying,” says Best. ​“There’s a shift in photography: it’s deadpan, in the street, and at lunch hours – about the world of labour seen at a distance.”

While American Job reflects the radical shifts across the 20^th century and into the new millennium, the exhibition reveals the tremulous thread from, which the working class is hung. By 1940, union leaders understood they had to rally support and defend labour from the relentless regression of corporate interests. ​“They talked about how the cost of living has gone up so much that people are not going to be able to survive, and this is where we’re at today.”

American Job: 1940 – 2011 is on view through May 05, 2025, at the International Center of Photography in New York.

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