Hearts and Crafts

It’s mid-2026, and the industrialized world is absorbing almost daily shocks from the hyper-speed of AI development. It’s the latest epochal change in work since the internet got real for everyone.

This is perhaps why the exhibition of photographs about work, unveiled April 3rd at Oakland Photo Workshop, seems to reach backwards almost farther than nostalgia.

It features industry still literally beyond the reach of automation, highlighting what must be done by hand. But for many viewers it shows that being done in places they rarely if ever have been or will go.

That distance toys with how we see the work: raising the question of whether the portrayed task, soon enough, is antiquated or instead timeless.

Also because of the distance, sometimes the work we see in the pictures is almost like a display of an alien culture. – tasks that accomplish an effect far exceeding the scale of the personal labor, but the effect is not very obvious to anyone other than who is doing the task. This intrigues because the task itself seems exotic; implying no narrative of cause and effect.

Other times, however, this group of photographers frames views in a way that the work needs no labeling; the task in scene is a moment that leads to something entirely familiar to us, and the labor is something that is not specialized but simply necessary. It is a kind of task, however, almost never celebrated.

In other words, as advertised, the show is built on noticing things that often lie beyond either our awareness or care. But this includes both the exotic and the mundane.

A few of the group's photos stand as exceptions to those two strains. For example, in one, the photo is the sole image of a worker being managed by another one - doing something somewhat inscrutable that makes the mystery task seem really critical. A second image is the only picture of a busy team, highlighting the immediate burden of the task. These two pictures add a layer of the energy that is felt in cooperation. Their views stress the workers attending to each other's work as much as they do to their own.

All of the other pictures have an unfiltered focus on the worker watching what they're doing themselves. In each case, the connection of the mind, eye, and hand sets the moment up as being nearly dramatic; no one is on “autopilot” in their effort, so not only do we feel they derive great satisfaction from dignifying the work with quality – but their attentiveness means that they are valuable to whoever comes along as the customer or user.

Overall, the sense of the show is that we’re watching people with scalpels, not axes; we keep coming back to their hands. That steeps the views in a kind of intimacy that, being a familiar feeling, helps us imagine ourselves, however briefly, in their roles.