Photography Exhibition: The Getty Museum - In Focus: The Worker

The Getty Museum in Los Angeles has one of the great photographic collections in the world. This exhibition of 40 prints of men, women, and children working include a range of photographic processes from daguerreotypes to gelatin silver prints.This exhibition, In Focus: The Worker, is one of the Getty’s most interesting.

This exhibition will run through March 21, 2010


The invention of photography was announced in 1839, when the Industrial Revolution was transforming daily life in the Western world. Workers of all types were central to these changes, and the camera was used—more than any other artistic medium—to picture them. In Focus: The Worker presents a photographic history of working people across many cultures.

Some of the exhibition photographs represent key moments in history and have become icons. Others are less well-known, but demonstrate the diversity of occupations and trades that interested photographers. Taken together, they reveal shifting attitudes toward the worker over much of the 19th and 20th centuries.

If you’re in the Los Angeles, California area before this exhibition leaves, don’t miss it.

As I travel, I love seeing the work of other photographers as I hope you do. If you know of a new photographic exhibition which you think the Blog should publicize, please contact me.