The body at work: visual imaginations of the “human machine” in the industrialization process

Jakob Tanner

The body at work: visual imaginations of the “human machine” in the industrialization process

In the industrialization process, work was visually represented in a multifarious and ambivalent way. The raising “working class hero” had his drawback in the oppressed and emaciated human being that symbolized capitalist exploitation. Against such a political iconography, scientific popularisers tried to circulate illustrations displaying the “human motor” in action. Committed to a thermodynamic conception of work, these images introduce nonetheless a magic aesthetic into the sober world of industrial production. Based on a wide variety of examples, it will be shown how this model, expressed in terms of energy and food, was replaced in the 20^th century by cybernetic and consumerist body pictures, using information and individuality as explanatory categories.