Stories About Work, With a Nod to Studs Terkel
Last Wednesday, several hundred people gathered on the third floor of Chicago’s Harold Washington Public Library for the opening of “Working in America,” a multimedia exhibition exploring how Americans find meaning in work and define themselves through their jobs. Twenty-four men and women were profiled for the exhibit, including a waitress, a police officer, a custodian, an escort, and a farmer. Large portraits of the subjects, taken by the photographer Lynsey Addario, were displayed in oversized wooden diptychs, accompanied by pamphlets that provided one-page bios of each worker.