Labor Daily

What Makes It Great? / Featured / April 8, 2026

There’s lumberjacks and teamsters and sailors from the sea,
There’s farmin’ boys from Texas and the hills of Tennessee,
There’s miners from Kentucky, there’s fishermen from Maine;
Every worker in the country rides that Farmer-Labor train.

There’s warehouse boys and truckers and guys that skin the cats,
Men that run the steel mills, the furnace and the blast,
Through the smoky factory cities, o’er the hot and dusty plains,
And the cushions they are crowded, on this Farmer-Labor train.

~Woody Guthrie, The Farm-Labor Train

by Elin Spring and Suzanne Révy

“Labor is the backbone of America” feels like an understatement, doesn’t it? The labor force goes far beyond supporting the skeleton of our economy. It fortifies our cultural strengths, harbors our fears and defines our values as a nation. These days, the condition of the working class is on shaky ground. Demands on the labor force are continuously shifting and an essential sector of that population – immigrants – face the mounting menace of deportation. As we prepare to celebrate the 250th birthday of the United States, the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, MA investigates the state of our workforce in “Labor Daily: American Working Class.” Carl Corey, Guggenheim Fellow and guest curator of the exhibit, joins his portraits with those of Chris Aluka Berry, Daniel Overturf, Xavier Tavera and Inna Valin in the Main Gallery. In the Griffin and Atelier Galleries he includes landscape photographs by Terry Evans and Julie Dermansky that implicate our industrial complex in the social injustices perpetuated on adjoining working class neighborhoods. In addition, Edward Boches illuminates the archives of museum founder Arthur Griffin with his recent work, “Labors of Love.” Together, all the photographs express the tenacity and resilience of America’s workers. On view through May 24th, 2026, there will an Opening Reception with the artists on Friday April 17th from 5:00 – 7:00pm, preceded by an Artist Panel from 3:00 – 4:30pm.

“Brent-Shipyard Machine Lathe Operator, Superior, Wisconsin, 2012” from the series Blue: Portrait of the American Worker by Carl Corey, courtesy of the artist and Griffin Museum of Photography.

From the series Blue: Portrait of the American Worker by Carl Corey, courtesy of the artist and Griffin Museum of Photography.

“Larry Scruggs – Mechanical Technician” from the series Blue: Portrait of the American Worker by Carl Corey, courtesy of the artist and Griffin Museum of Photography.

Portraits of working men and women line the walls of Labor Daily. In Blue: A Portrait of the American Worker, Carl Corey has photographed individuals in their workplaces across the United States. Using a large-format camera which requires time to prepare, he nurtures extended personal engagement with each of his subjects. Daniel Overturf’s environmental portraits possess a similar sense of place while focusing on Illinois Workers: On the Rivers and in the Mines. Both photographers select a diversity of subjects, placing individuals at the center of the frame, prompting their direct gaze at the camera, and lighting them professionally, all of which imparts esteem for each person’s worth and contribution to society.

From the series Illinois Workers: On the Rivers and in the Mines by Daniel Overturf, courtesy of the artist and Griffin Museum of Photography.

From the series Illinois Workers: On the Rivers and in the Mines by Daniel Overturf, courtesy of the artist and Griffin Museum of Photography.

From the series Illinois Workers: On the Rivers and in the Mines by Daniel Overturf, courtesy of the artist and Griffin Museum of Photography.

From the series Restaurant Service Workers by Xavier Tavera, courtesy of the artist and Griffin Museum of Photography.

From the series Restaurant Service Workers by Xavier Tavera, courtesy of the artist and Griffin Museum of Photography.

From the series Restaurant Service Workers by Xavier Tavera, courtesy of the artist and Griffin Museum of Photography.

Xavier Tavera extracts his Restaurant Service Workers from their workplace and asks each to pose before his nearby portable, warm-toned backdrop, which he has set up with flattering directional lighting. Each worker holds a kitchen utensil that they regularly use, creating a portrait that, while not environmental, conveys something of the person’s job while emphasizing their centrality in the frame. Tavera’s portraits are obviously a typology, but Corey’s and Overturf’s portraits achieve the same fundamental idea of elevating the worker. The neutral expressions of the laborers make them essentially interchangeable, affording an aggregate feeling of gravitas and pride across a variety of vocations.

“A woman working at a gentlemen’s club and her boss” from the series Leave Me Not Alone by Inna Valin, courtesy of the artist and Griffin Museum of Photography.

“Gas station worker taking out the trash” from the series Leave Me Not Alone by Inna Valin, courtesy of the artist and Griffin Museum of Photography.

“County fair vendor” from the series Leave Me Not Alone by Inna Valin, courtesy of the artist and Griffin Museum of Photography.

In contrast, Inna Valin’s Leave Me Not Alone and Chris Aluka Berry’s Where Hope Grows underline the informal immediacy of photojournalism. With a focus on outliers, Valin’s black and white pictures are all made outdoors and have a fleeting sense of being grabbed quickly. This engenders authenticity, including some workers who greet her with suspicion or even outright hostility.

Feature Image: “South Carolina Sun” from the series Where Hope Grows by Chris Aluka Berry, courtesy of the artist and Griffin Museum of Photography, Winchester, MA.

“Going Home” from the series Where Hope Grows by Chris Aluka Berry, courtesy of the artist and Griffin Museum of Photography.

“Moment of Rest” from the series Where Hope Grows by Chris Aluka Berry, courtesy of the artist and Griffin Museum of Photography.

For his series Where Hope Grows, Chris Aluka Berry spent two years documenting legal, temporary Mexican migrant workers at Titan Farms in Ridge Spring, South Carolina, the second largest producer of peaches in the US. Photographing in the work and leisure spaces of the men’s and women’s camps, he formed trusting relationships only made possible over time. As a result, his empathic portraits document a wide range of stories and emotions in this tireless community. Whether narrative or formal in approach, the portraits in Labor Daily share a clear reverence for the working class, expressing the spirit of laborers as enduring and resilient.

“Slag, Indiana Harbor, February 28th, 2006” by Terry Evans, from the exhibition Steel Work, courtesy of the artist, Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago, and the Griffin Museum of Photography.

“Indiana Harbor, January 4th, 2007” by Terry Evans, from the exhibition Steel Work, courtesy of the artist, Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago and the Griffin Museum of Photography.

“Graphite, Indiana Harbor, April 27th, 2007” by Terry Evans from the exhibition Steel Work, courtesy of the artist, Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago, and the Griffn Museum of Photography.

Resources extracted from the environment are the vertebrae in the backbone of our economy. Like it or not, we need to exploit the landscape in order to survive and thrive. But as ever, humans rarely act in moderation. We leave gaping wounds in the ground in order to manufacture all manner of products. For Steel Work, Terry Evans spent two years photographing the steel industry in the midwest. Mountains of sand and smelting ovens are beautiful under her gaze, while also terrifying in their detail and sheer scale. Her color palette leans into monochrome hues of browns, greens and blacks that emphasize the elements of earth poured into burning cauldrons to be transformed into products of everyday convenience. Disturbingly, I can feel the dirt and grime enter my lungs looking at these pictures, which heightens my sense of the dangers endured working there.

“Church in Cancer Alley” by Julie Dermansky, from the exhibition Precursors to the Climate Crisis, Courtesy of the Fossil Fuel Industry, courtesy of the artist and the Griffin Museum of Photography.

“The Holy Rosary Cemetery next to Dow Chemical” by Julie Dermansky, from the exhibition Precursors to the Climate Crisis, Courtesy of the Fossil Fuel Industry, courtesy of the artist and the Griffin Museum of Photography.

“Christmas in Cancer Alley” by Julie Dermansky, from the exhibition Precursors to the Climate Crisis, Courtesy of the Fossil Fuel Industry, courtesy of the artist and the Griffin Museum of Photography.

Julie Dermansky’s studies of commanding power plants, industrial storage tanks and oil spills in close proximity to residential neighborhoods are visually striking but unsettling. Precursors to the Climate Crisis, Courtesy of the Fossil Fuel Industry is presented in saturated color on metal prints that float on the wall. They are luminous, underscoring a sense of grace and empathy for the people who dwell and toil in the industrial corridor known as Cancer Alley in Louisiana. Churches and cemeteries are flanked by fiery smokestacks or unsightly tanks; a modest home adorned with Christmas lights is overwhelmed by an operational petrochemical plant behind it. The luminosity of these prints belie the hazards from belching emissions, light or noise pollution and the ever present stench of unnatural contaminants.

“Women on Tide” by Edward Boches, 2024, from the exhibition Labors of Love, courtesy of the artist and the Griffin Museum of Photography.

“A Lobster Crew in Cohasset, MA” by Arthur Griffin, 1935-55, from the exhibition Labors of Love, courtesy of the Griffin Museum of Photography.

In the Founders Gallery, Labors of Love by local photographer Edward Boches engages with the Arthur Griffin Archive in an intimate installation that brings Griffin’s vintage prints made between the 1930’s and 50’s into conversation with Boches empathetic studies of workers. Both photographers looked at the fishing industry with Griffin’s images of the fish industry in New England presented alongside Boches’ pictures of oyster harvesting in Wellfleet. And though not traditionally thought of as working class, each photographed creative artists and artisans whose work ethic runs deep. Seen together, the photographs reveal a continuum, rhythm and grace to the simple tasks of foraging, harvesting, and making through the generations.