Framing the Shots
By Julian Kilker
What work does photography involve? How can it document the world around us? Photographers have explored the intersections between the technologies at play and the humanity it can portray since the field’s beginning.
Photograph by Bobbie Ann Howell/Nevada Humanities. Visitors to The Hidden Faces of Work exhibit photograph themselves through the “Framing the Shoot” piece; their faces are reflected in a mirror on the nearby wall. Deciding how to adjust the lighting and their own position within the frame introduces visitors to decisions photographers must make.
First, a little detour: As the invention of photography was nearing the century mark, in 1937, New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) featured a comprehensive exhibit curated by Beaumont Newhall. (The exhibit’s catalog was the basis for five editions of Newhall’s influential History of Photography textbook.) Visitors first encountered a giant box camera into which they could step and view, on a frosted glass screen, upside-down images of people entering the building. Curator Sophie Hackett points out that Newhall’s curation, combining as it did “photographic objects and equipment, along with didactic displays” focused on technology and enabled Newhall to “dissociate the photographer from the photograph.”
Photograph by Joshua Cruzado. Diontai, an Esports tournament organizer, manages a match on March 21, 2024. Diontai is a leader in the Las Vegas Tekken video game scene and has run the Bragging Rights series of tournaments for nearly three years. In an interview, Diontai said, “I love to gather people together and for them to enjoy each other’s company and to just have a good time together.”
Eighty-seven years later, the core questions raised in that pioneer exhibit continue through the current Nevada Humanities Exhibition Series, Hidden Faces of Work: Behind Las Vegas’s Non-Stop Economy now on display at the Nevada Humanities Program Gallery in Las Vegas. With synthetic digital and AI imagery proliferating, what does it now mean to practice photography? When everyone with a phone can capture and distribute photographs, who is now a “photographer”?
Hidden Faces explores “invisible” labor captured through the lenses of student photographers. Their assignment: To learn through exploration how to create visual stories about workers that engage with diverse audiences. For the exhibit, students photographed, interviewed, and researched workers in 22 contexts as part of my course at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). Although Las Vegas is a modern metropolis with a diverse workforce, and rural Nevada includes agricultural, mining, and military populations, Nevada is a predominately tourism-based, service-sector economy that, according to the U.S. Census, combines higher than average salaries and lower than average educational attainment. Most of the student photographers work while attending school and have faced financial precarity in a gig economy; the workers they document reflect the diversity of the students’ interests and contacts.
Photograph by Xayve Diaz. Maria welding fence parts at Eby Iron Design on March 22, 2024. According to Maria, “Being a female welder in a community where welding is seen as a male point of view just shows me how capable women are.”
We focused on documenting “invisible” work because entire labor categories are overlooked, because service-sector work is frequently physically or figuratively “backstage,” and because the complexities of other people’s work is often unappreciated. Photography itself fits into the last category: On the surface accessible and straightforward, a serious pursuit of photography involves refining a wide range of “hard” (technical) and “soft” (social) skills. In photography “tacit knowledge” is important—its technical and social processes are difficult to formalize, communicate, and teach. Thus, this course focused on mentorship from knowledgeable guest speakers and myself, experiential problem-solving, and deepening skills and creative approaches.
In addition to the 39 student photographs on display, several of which are featured in this blog post, the exhibit also includes a “Framing the Shot” interactive piece in homage to MoMA’s large camera. This piece allows visitors—as they document themselves through a picture frame—to make lighting and composition decisions just as the students did while planning their portraits. Consider: How is your own area of work usually photographed, and what’s missing from such representations? How would you design your own visual story?
Photograph by Julieta Aldrete. Ondrej, a UNLV student and guitarist in the band Zerzura, takes a break from practicing. He says that “The life of a musician is by nature very uncertain as a lot of it is freelance work that relies on your ability to not only play your instrument well but also to network.”
The Hidden Faces of Work: Behind Las Vegas’ Non-Stop Economy is on display April 5 – May 29, 2024, at the Nevada Humanities Program Gallery in Las Vegas. Learn more about this exhibition here.
This exhibit features work by Julieta Aldrete, Kendall Banas, José Blea, Gizzell Contreras, Cynthia Covarrubias, Joshua Cruzado, Xayve Diaz, Jero Guerra, Joshua Harris, Lynnsie Holloway, Desiree Jacobo, Julian Kilker, Seth Kordich, Miriam Lachica, Chassidy Lynn, Angelo Masangkay, Adriana Orchard, Isabella Pupo, Adryan Qujiano, Julia Sidley, Nickolas Tanouye, Joy Villanueva, and Brandon Wong, as well as a historic image selected by Aaron Mayes from the Warren A. Bechtel Photographic Album, UNLV, University Libraries Special Collections and Archives.
I’d like to thank the generous skilled community who helped make this project happen: Bobbie Ann Howell and Patty Dominguez of Nevada Humanities for advising me on the exhibit process and mounting it in record time; Checko Salgado for curation advice and providing test paper from Hahnemühle; guest speaker-mentors Aaron Mayes of UNLV Libraries Special Collections (who also loaned the mirror for “Framing the Shot”), Deanne Sole of UNLV’s Barrick Museum, drone and environmental photography expert Paula Jacoby-Garrett, and photographer-filmmaker Shahab Zargari; the UNLV School of Journalism and Media Studies for providing camera equipment; and the NAB and WPPI trade shows for allowing students to explore the latest visual technologies. Finally, a special thanks to all the workers who kindly gave their time and allowed their stories to be featured in this exhibit.
Julian Kilker is an associate professor of emerging media at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. His professional and creative work focuses on the intersection of visual media, social issues, and innovation.