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.
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/
