Work and the Image : Volume 1: Work, Craft and Labour - Visual Representations in Changing Histories

This title was first published in 2000. "Work and the Image" is published in two volumes. 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.

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.