Butch Greenleaf, Machinist from the series "lunch boxes"

Sharon Lockhart’s “Lunch Boxes” are photographic still-lifes and, in equal measure, portraits. They originated in conjunction with Lockhart’s artistic project in the Bath Iron Works, a historical ships’ wharf located in the US state of Maine, where Lockhart spent an entire year accompanying the workers. The resulting films and photographs do not testify to productivity and hard labour, though, but focus on halt, pause, and rest: The film “Lunch Break” shows workers sitting in a long corridor having their lunches, the film “Exit” shows them leaving the factory in the evening. The photographic series originate at the same time as “Lunch Boxes”. “The lunch boxes were a way of getting around the conventionality of the workers portraits“, says Sharon Lockhart, „they engage the problem that I was grappling with in the film Lunch Break: how do you get around the clichés that riddle the representation of workers? Through their construction, and their contents, the lunch boxes tell you so much about the people who own them and their culture – their rituals, personal choices, skills and interests – as well as about all the trades that go into shipbuilding and about the ships the workers worked on.“ Sharon Lockhart investigates the boxes in a scientific manner, examines and records their contents by taking photographs. The ever-identical positioning of the closed or opened or emptied boxes before a neutral backdrop underpins an objective, documentary character, as does the titles, which state the respective owner’s name, surname, and profession.