Working Day

2021

“Maybe it’s time you found a real job?” “You’re almost thirty, and with this photography of yours you still don’t have a penny to your name.” “So you spent two and a half hours shooting today? What did you do with the rest of your time?” “Congratulations on the exhibition opening! We’re so proud of you. Tell me, will you get paid for it?” I have heard remarks like these often since leaving my job at a state institution several years ago and moving into freelance photography.

In his essay “The Psychoanalysis of Ruins, ” Dylan Trigg writes about ruins as matter that distorts our rational perception of space and time. A ruin belongs to the past, yet continues to act upon the present; it is dead, but still capable of affecting the living. Against this backdrop of dissonance, Trigg argues, anxiety emerges.

For me, these ruins are not only buildings, but also the voices from a former, “stable” life. They continue to exist alongside me, warping my perception of myself and of my work. Their logic is simple: labour must be measurable, disciplined, paid, and legible. Anything that falls outside this framework becomes suspect, unserious, or temporary.

A person has the right not to be dependent on their workplace, and to determine the shape of their own life. Yet in this performative act, I proceed by contradiction: I bind myself to a tool — the camera — setting it to manual shutter mode. Pressing the shutter button opens the curtains, allowing light to reach the film; releasing it closes them.

A classic working day lasts eight hours, divided into two stretches by a lunch break. That is how long I am to stand with my finger pressed down on the shutter. This exertion transforms photographic practice into an absurdly simple relation between a mechanical action and a predetermined period of time, in the hope that this will grant it the attributes of “real work.” By directing the lens at an abandoned building, I try to hide behind the temporal rupture that occurs at the moment the shutter is released. What is registered on the overexposed film is not proof, but the exhaustion of having to prove.