BOOK AUTHOR »WORKINGMAN`S DEATH« by Michael Glawogger Images & Texts on Work in the 21st Century 280 pages ISBN: 3-85476-186-4 Published: German original: January 2006 These are stories that revolve around photography, travel, the making of a film, and a particular way of viewing the subject of work. The movie Workingman's Death visits a number of different continents and explores the importance of heavy manual labor in the twenty-first century. In the first half of the previous century the worker was still being stylized into a role model, into the pillar of support in various social systems, even into a hero. Now he has lost much of this prestige, and yet he still has to work just as hard as before. Today, the hero role has been assumed by others. The book gives extra information about the locations and ideas presented in the film. The places that did end up in the movie are complemented here by stories that were filmed but discarded, trips to and research done in Tanzania, India, Thailand, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Russia. In each country, moreover, an independent photographer who was not connected with the shooting or the views of the film was invited to put together his own photo essay and tell his own story. The book also contains damaged photos as well as descriptions of photos never taken – and why they were never taken. It talks about how hard it is to take certain photos, about the initial reluctance one has to take a picture of a stranger; about familiarization, moments of recognition, and the beautiful instant of shooting a photo that is precise and right. It tells about places where we weren't allowed to take photographs and yet we managed to, and about places where we had permission, but then simply weren't able to. It tells about the beauty of the still unfinished and the motifs of the recurring, about losses and the small victories a photographer may experience every once in a while. order at Mandelbaum Verlag »