F or most Americans, Labor Day is a day off from work.
But for people in other parts of the world, Labor Day is just another Monday, the start of just another work week.
Some of those folks show up for work in the 190 images in “Work: The World in Photographs,” Ferdinand Protzman’s coffee table book that celebrates the diverse ways by which people in all parts of the world earn a living.
Protzman has scoured the archives of National Geographic and other sources to come up with a collection of images that show people at work during the past 150 years, from photography’s first days to the first days of the 21st century. The photos, many of them previously unpublished, represent the work of about 80 photographers.
In his foreword, Protzman, a culture writer, critic and contributor to ARTnews magazine, writes that the book’s photos were selected because “they have something to say about time, place and people.”
Our work defines us. The book’s photos, Protzman writes, “tell of their subjects’ work and lives and circumstances. The pictures speak of wealth and poverty, pain and violence, joy and despair.” The occupations of our ancestors are even reflected in family names: Carpenter, Cook, Farmer, Sawyer, Smith and Wright are among the surnames derived from English-language words for occupations, and there are others from various cultures and languages.
The photos in “Work” are divided into six geographical regions, and into three “Portfolio” sections that show the different ways in which similar jobs in agriculture, extraction and manufacturing are performed throughout the world.
Work rooted in antiquity is performed by a man in Syria who is shown hammering an intricate design into a copper bowl; by an Egyptian woman preparing mounds of bread dough, each to be baked on its own flat stone; and by a woman in Baghdad weaving reeds into a mat as the Iraq war rages around her.
In contrast, there are the workers in hard hats climbing an intricate latticework to check welds on a nuclear plant under construction in Washington state and air traffic controllers with their eyes on the skies in a panoramic view from inside the busy tower at Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C.
Some depicted workers are “collectors”; They harvest wool in Australia, flowers in California, turtle eggs in Costa Rica and even soot to make ink sticks in Japan; and they mine coal, platinum, salt, lead, gold and sulfur, but not copper – at least not in the closed mine in Granite Ridge, Alaska, marked by a tractor abandoned on a hillside.
Not everyone in “Work” ($35) is toiling furiously: There’s the cowherd in Bangladesh who is napping on, of all places, a railroad track while his fellow cowherd herds the cows; the rickshaw driver in Beijing whose bent legs and feet peer over the side of his vehicle while he catches a few winks in the passenger seat; and the operator of a heavy equipment machine in South Africa who is dozing in the vehicle’s cab.
Among those not yet working are the commuters in Queens, N.Y., waiting for the No. 7 train to take them to their jobs in Manhattan; and the applicant at the unemployment office in Saudi Arabia whose documents are being checked by the clerk on the job.
Although the mention of the word “work” can arouse dread in the hearts of some people, “all work isn’t drudgery, or misery,” Protzman reminds us. “Some people find their work fulfilling. Some flat-out love their work.
“They’re the lucky ones.”
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