This is the workers edition of Friedlander's 'Human clay' series with 253 photos selected from his archives. As you would expect he manages to brilliantly capture people doing their jobs and mostly ignoring a man with a camera looking at them though there are some posed shots like a group of firemen in Minneapolis in 1966, looking at Friedlander while a building burns away behind them or the shoe repairers in New York looking out of their store window in 1960.
The photos have been arranged in themes, the first few pages feature agriculture, then what is seen on any street, factory workers, carnival strippers, computer workers, telemarketing (some of the last two have appeared in Friedlander's 2002 book 'At work') fashion show, boxing, opera singers, a long section on authors, photographers, artists, and other creative folk, with the last few pages revealing jazz musicians.
It's certainly a very diverse collection of worker photos with a range of compositions showing people in their work environment, either in a long shot or, in case of telemarketers, extreme close-ups of their faces.
The photos were taken between 1954 and 2016 and shown mostly one to a page with a brief caption of name, location and year. They are printed (by Steidl) on matt art paper with a 175 screen. Workers is part of Friedlaner's Human Clay series, other titles include Portraits, Parties, Children, Street and At Work.
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