Student Picks: Workers in the Shadows

Student Picks is a SCMA program in which Smith students organize their own one-day art show using our collection of works on paper. This month’s student curator and guest blogger Stephanie Pinedo '18  discusses her show "Workers in the Shadows: Portraits of Urban Life" which will be on view FRIDAY, December 4 from 12-4 PM in the Cunningham Center for the Study of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs. We hope to see you there!

Cities are a subject that continue to fascinate artists. Urban photographers have long been trying to capture the “essence” of the city by emphasizing qualities such as scale, speed, and connectivity. There are some features, however, that go very much unnoticed. 

^{Josef Breitenbach. American born Germany, 1896–1984. Construction Worker [Beauty at Work], Bombay, India, 1960. Gelatin silver print. Gift of Peter C. Jones and Charlotte M. Frieze, class of 1974. SC 2001.20.4.}

In this show, I would like to shine light on the work and workers that go unseen in urban spaces. I feel that their presence should be recognized as much as the staggering skyscrapers and bustling roads they build and maintain.

^{Left: Danny Lyon. American, born 1942. Beekman Street subbasement. The demolition contract requires that the building be brought down to street level. Basements and tunnels are filled in and left buried beneath vacant lots. from The Destruction of Lower Manhattan, 1967 negative, 2007 print. Gelatin silver print. Gift of Nicole Moretti Ungar, class of 1982, and Jon Ungar. SC 2012.84.7.} 

^{Right: Alfred Stieglitz. American, 1864–1946. Spring Showers, New York from Camera Work #36, 1900-1901 negative; 1911 October published. Photogravure on paper. Bequest of Henry L. Seaver. SC 1976.54.308.} 

I would like to thank the Cunningham Center and Colleen McDermott for helping me organize this art show as well as my father, a construction worker, for teaching me to give credit where credit is due.

^{Andy Warhol. American, 1930–1987. People on the Street, n.d. Gelatin silver print. Gift of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. SC 2008.28.145}