Shaun Waugh
ME37 Nightshift Freezing Workers by Shaun Waugh was a billboard project, featuring 54 portraits of individuals employed at the Belfast freezing works, the images explores photography’s uneasy position between subjective and objective modes of representation.
This is what I am trying to do with the people I photograph.
Each worker is photographed in their overalls and white gum boots against a relatively blank background of insulation panelling and concrete flooring. There are no overt props, just the odd pair of plastic gloves, ear-muffs or a hair net.
These photographs play with the conventions of traditional portraiture and the social documentary image, whilst also referencing recent trends in contemporary photography.
Waugh’s images reflect upon what it is to see and be seen; what it is to be subject and viewer. In an attempt to minimize his presence as photographer, he offered only minimal direction to those who stood before his lens; participants were simply asked to stand facing the camera. Of more importance to Waugh is that his subjects respond to the camera in as raw and intuitive a way as possible. Within the highly structured composition of each image, then, he offers his subjects a certain freedom of expression. Yet it is interesting to see how each individual continues to respond to the camera according to an established set of conventions; although each slightly different, the poses we see here are certainly familiar stances within the realm of the photographic portrait.
Text taken from: http://www.coca.org.nz/exhibitions/60/
