Strike! Photo Stories of Labor Struggles : Bouba Touré / Screening Xaraasi Xanne – Crossing Voices
Museum der Arbeit
Strike! Photo Stories of Labor Struggles
May 20 – October 3, 2022
This exhibition presents a photographic history of key labor struggles and momentum from the 1960s to the current gig economy. Organized as a set of chapters, Strike! Photo Stories of Labor Struggles takes the structural crises of leading regional industries in the Ruhr region and Hamburg in the 1960s and 1980s as a starting point for the development of strike culture in Germany. Also explored are the UK miners’ strike of 1984–1985, the sans-papiers of France, led by migrant workers from 1996 onwards, and the 2012 strike of South African miners in the region of Marikani.
With a focus on photography, Strike! explores how awareness and solidarity spread through a visual culture of labor struggles, affecting both participants and the self-image of trade unions. The majority of the images presented were taken by photojournalists who accompanied the labor struggles. The photo archive of the Ruhr Museum Essen contains the estates and archives of a number of significant photographers, among them Anton Tripp, Manfred Scholz, and Klaus Rose, while series held by the Museum der Arbeit, DOMiD in Cologne, Magnum Paris, and the photographers themselves, enrich this presentation. Through oral history and ephemera, Strike! aims to center the protagonists of these movements and public response to these actions.
Curated by Stefan Rahner.
Xaraasi Xanne-Crossing Voices
A film by Bouba Touré and Raphaël Grisey
Screening at 6pm at Museum der Arbeit
Location
Hamburg, DE
