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From Sandwich Shops To Cotton Mills, Art That Honors The American Worker

Lewis Wickes Hine's <em>Child Labor</em> shows young Sadie Pfeifer at Lancaster Cotton Mills in South Carolina.
Lewis Wickes Hine
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Bank of America Collection/ Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery
Lewis Wickes Hine's Child Labor shows young Sadie Pfeifer at Lancaster Cotton Mills in South Carolina.

A lot of very hard work is going on at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.

A muscled guy in an undershirt tightens a big bolt with his wrench; a farm worker bends almost in half, filling his sack with cotton; Rosie the Riveter rolls up her sleeve to tackle her factory job. They're all part of an exhibition called "The Sweat Of Their Face: Portraying American Workers."

But not all the laborers are big and burly.

A forlorn young girl — she can't be more than 11 or 12 — stands at a long row of spools of thread mounted on a big piece of complicated machinery. Photographer Lewis Wickes Hine wrote her name and height on the back of the picture: "Sadie Pfeifer, 48 inches high, has worked half a year." She had a job in 1908 at the Lancaster Cotton Mills in South Carolina. You can almost hear the noise, feel the heat.

"And there she is, this little girl, alone, facing an enormous machine," says Dorothy Moss, who curated this show with David C. Ward. She says Hine was a crusader, and his cause was to abolish child labor. "He would often disguise himself as a Bible vendor or newspaper deliverer, other professions, to get into these mills."

Hine put himself at risk to take these pictures, and, with the camera as witness, reforms and regulations were enacted. This exhibition showcases centuries of American workers. They are, as Moss says,"the people who were building this country, who may be on the sidelines, who are not always the focus of our attention. But because artists often identify as workers, artists felt strongly to bring these peoples' stories out and to honor them."

In this century, Los Angeles painter Ramiro Gomez honors his parents (his mother is a janitor; his father is a truck driver) by adding workers onto copies of iconic American paintings. In his version of David Hockney's Man in Shower in Beverly Hills, Gomez deletes the man and inserts a cleaning woman; we can't see her face — just her hands squeegee-ing the shower tiles. Gomez is making the invisible visible; he and others in the show take workers we never notice, and make us notice.

In his version of a famous David Hockney painting, Ramiro Gomez deletes the man and inserts a cleaning woman. The result is <em>Woman Cleaning Shower in Beverly Hills</em>.
Mark Gulezian / Ramiro Gomez private collection/ Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery
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Ramiro Gomez private collection/ Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery
In his version of a famous David Hockney painting, Ramiro Gomez deletes the man and inserts a cleaning woman. The result is Woman Cleaning Shower in Beverly Hills.

A food worker in a Subway sandwich store gets the full treatment from photographer Shauna Frischkorn. She puts him against a black background, and lights his face to look sculptural. The black and green Subway cap sits on his red hair like a crown. It's like a Renaissance portrait, but with a little smile — a twinkle.

"She's restoring his humanity through the pose and lighting," Moss says.

While the workers aren't known, some of the artists who portray them are famous. The exhibition includes photographs by Dorothea Lange, Gordon Parks and Ansel Adams, and it has paintings by Winslow Homer and George Bellows.

Left: <em>Kean, Subway Sandwich Artist</em> by Shauna Frischkorn. Right: <em>Pat Lyon at the Forge</em> by John Neagle.
Shauna Frischkorn; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia / Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery
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Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery
Left: Kean, Subway Sandwich Artist by Shauna Frischkorn. Right: Pat Lyon at the Forge by John Neagle.

Other artists are less familiar. John Neagle was fashionable in his day, less so now. Still, his 1829 portrait of Pat Lyon is a marvel. It shows a big, beefy guy in a leather apron — a blacksmith at his anvil. The muscles strain in his right arm. In real life, Pat Lyon was falsely accused of theft and jailed for three years — then he became a wealthy businessman. Yet the painter shows him sweating at his anvil, at Lyon's request.

"He said he wanted to be shown as a working man because the working people of this country are the most honest people of the country," Moss says.

For an image of someone actually enjoying their work, Moss points to Dawoud Bey's 1976 photo Mr. Moore's Bar-B-Que, 125th Street. The owner beams from behind his Harlem lunch counter. He's looked up from talking with a customer who's waiting for her food. (She's smoking, and better flick off the long cigarette ash pretty soon.) Mr. Moore's apron is stained, probably with barbecue sauce, and he looks welcoming and proud.

Dawoud Bey's <em>Mr. Moore's Bar-B-Que, 125th Street</em> shows someone actually enjoying their work.
Dawoud Bey / Courtesy of the artist and Stephen Daiter Gallery, Chicago
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Courtesy of the artist and Stephen Daiter Gallery, Chicago
Dawoud Bey's Mr. Moore's Bar-B-Que, 125th Street shows someone actually enjoying their work.

"It looks like a wonderful place to spend an afternoon," Moss says.

Workers of the world — well, the United States, anyway — unite at this Portrait Gallery exhibition. "The Sweat Of Their Face" reminds visitors of the range of vital work we do — and the ways we feel about it.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Nationally renowned broadcast journalist Susan Stamberg is a special correspondent for NPR.
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