Work and the Image

<p>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.</p>