UC Santa Cruz

ABSTRACT

Gross Domestic People of the 21st Century is a trans-media online archive of photographs, videos, interviews, audio portraits and digital sketches of (mainly) union workers employed within industries of socioeconomic transition. In sum, this project is an attempt to produce a class of propaganda materials made as a collaborative effort with workers involved in the contemporary labor movement. Through a photographic social practice, workers articulate the direction of their visual culture of labor in a 21st Century context.

In our contemporary era, social documentation brings forward concerns of content, ethics, and the impact of collaborative authorship and collective ownership of images. Since this joint effort addresses concerns of documentation, I advise the reader to focus on the role performativity and negotiation to support a rebirth of labor’s visual culture. In addition, images produced through this collaborative process address political and social concerns, which came to light during interviews about work and union representation. In this light, I invite the reader to peruse and investigate the totality of the project.