LAX 1.2
Edition: 1/1
Dimensions: 24” × 16” image with a 0.8” white border
Details: Laser-exposed onto photo emulsion paper with a barium sulfate base, then hand-developed, fixed, and rinsed. Signed and dated on the back. Made to order with a 14-day production time. Shipped via FedEx Overnight with adult signature required upon delivery. Securely packaged between soft foam pillows in a 22” × 27” × 3” art box. Email notifications will be sent upon order receipt, production commencement, and shipment. The final shipping confirmation will include the FedEx Overnight tracking number.
Description:
A black-and-white image of a California grocery store aisle presents a scene of pristine order. Shelves are fully stocked, each item precisely arranged beneath the sterile hum of fluorescent lights. The signs—“novelties,” “vegetables,” “desserts & pies”—indicate choice and abundance. Yet the scene is devoid of people. That absence is the photograph’s core: an image of consumption defined by what it conceals—the labor that built it and the economic structures that maintain it.
The stillness of the image is not natural. It is manufactured by human labor carried out under economic necessity. Each gleaming surface and every stocked shelf represents hours of work performed in exchange for survival. Noam Chomsky captures this condition in plain terms: “What used to be called, centuries ago, ‘wage slavery’ is intolerable. And I don't think people ought to be forced to rent themselves in order to survive” (On Anarchism 89). The photograph stages this paradox quietly. It depicts a space that promises nourishment, but only through participation in the system that produced it.
Whether one stocks the frozen aisle or shops from it after a shift elsewhere, sustenance in this space is contingent on submission to wage labor. Chomsky refers to this arrangement as “private totalitarianism”: economic institutions that govern workers through hierarchical command structures (Government in the Future). The aisle is a corridor of economic compliance—order sustained by obedience, dependency masked as freedom.
This critique extends beyond factory floors and warehouses. The condition is structural. Most employment under capitalism demands that individuals rent their time in exchange for life’s basic necessities. As Chomsky writes, echoing Humboldt, labor under compulsion alienates the worker from themselves. Work becomes mechanical, not expressive—performed “with reluctance… under external control” (Government in the Future).
Tom O’Shea deepens this analysis. In his forthcoming work “Wage Slavery: A Neo-Roman Account,” he argues that wage labor constitutes a form of domination when survival depends on the will of another. This dependency defines not just labor, but life itself under capitalism (O’Shea 114–15). In this light, the grocery store becomes more than a retail space—it is a structure of quiet subjugation. The visual calm of the image mirrors the broader suppression of autonomy required to sustain it.
This perspective is not novel. Nineteenth-century American labor movements recognized wage labor as incompatible with democratic self-rule. The early labor press insisted, “those who worked in the mills should own them,” a call for collective control over the conditions of survival (On Anarchism 92). The photograph inherits this political lineage, documenting not a grocery aisle but a social contract: access to sustenance, contingent on acquiescence.
What appears clean, neutral, and calm is revealed to be anything but. The photograph captures a system that trades autonomy for survival, offers order in exchange for dependence, and transforms necessity into the illusion of choice.
Works Cited
Chomsky, Noam. Government in the Future. 1970. Chomsky.info.
Chomsky, Noam. On Anarchism. New Press, 2013.
O'Shea, Tom. "Wage Slavery: A Neo-Roman Account." European Journal of Political Theory, forthcoming 2024.
Edition: 1/1
Dimensions: 24” × 16” image with a 0.8” white border
Details: Laser-exposed onto photo emulsion paper with a barium sulfate base, then hand-developed, fixed, and rinsed. Signed and dated on the back. Made to order with a 14-day production time. Shipped via FedEx Overnight with adult signature required upon delivery. Securely packaged between soft foam pillows in a 22” × 27” × 3” art box. Email notifications will be sent upon order receipt, production commencement, and shipment. The final shipping confirmation will include the FedEx Overnight tracking number.
Description:
A black-and-white image of a California grocery store aisle presents a scene of pristine order. Shelves are fully stocked, each item precisely arranged beneath the sterile hum of fluorescent lights. The signs—“novelties,” “vegetables,” “desserts & pies”—indicate choice and abundance. Yet the scene is devoid of people. That absence is the photograph’s core: an image of consumption defined by what it conceals—the labor that built it and the economic structures that maintain it.
The stillness of the image is not natural. It is manufactured by human labor carried out under economic necessity. Each gleaming surface and every stocked shelf represents hours of work performed in exchange for survival. Noam Chomsky captures this condition in plain terms: “What used to be called, centuries ago, ‘wage slavery’ is intolerable. And I don't think people ought to be forced to rent themselves in order to survive” (On Anarchism 89). The photograph stages this paradox quietly. It depicts a space that promises nourishment, but only through participation in the system that produced it.
Whether one stocks the frozen aisle or shops from it after a shift elsewhere, sustenance in this space is contingent on submission to wage labor. Chomsky refers to this arrangement as “private totalitarianism”: economic institutions that govern workers through hierarchical command structures (Government in the Future). The aisle is a corridor of economic compliance—order sustained by obedience, dependency masked as freedom.
This critique extends beyond factory floors and warehouses. The condition is structural. Most employment under capitalism demands that individuals rent their time in exchange for life’s basic necessities. As Chomsky writes, echoing Humboldt, labor under compulsion alienates the worker from themselves. Work becomes mechanical, not expressive—performed “with reluctance… under external control” (Government in the Future).
Tom O’Shea deepens this analysis. In his forthcoming work “Wage Slavery: A Neo-Roman Account,” he argues that wage labor constitutes a form of domination when survival depends on the will of another. This dependency defines not just labor, but life itself under capitalism (O’Shea 114–15). In this light, the grocery store becomes more than a retail space—it is a structure of quiet subjugation. The visual calm of the image mirrors the broader suppression of autonomy required to sustain it.
This perspective is not novel. Nineteenth-century American labor movements recognized wage labor as incompatible with democratic self-rule. The early labor press insisted, “those who worked in the mills should own them,” a call for collective control over the conditions of survival (On Anarchism 92). The photograph inherits this political lineage, documenting not a grocery aisle but a social contract: access to sustenance, contingent on acquiescence.
What appears clean, neutral, and calm is revealed to be anything but. The photograph captures a system that trades autonomy for survival, offers order in exchange for dependence, and transforms necessity into the illusion of choice.
Works Cited
Chomsky, Noam. Government in the Future. 1970. Chomsky.info.
Chomsky, Noam. On Anarchism. New Press, 2013.
O'Shea, Tom. "Wage Slavery: A Neo-Roman Account." European Journal of Political Theory, forthcoming 2024.
Edition: 1/1
Dimensions: 24” × 16” image with a 0.8” white border
Details: Laser-exposed onto photo emulsion paper with a barium sulfate base, then hand-developed, fixed, and rinsed. Signed and dated on the back. Made to order with a 14-day production time. Shipped via FedEx Overnight with adult signature required upon delivery. Securely packaged between soft foam pillows in a 22” × 27” × 3” art box. Email notifications will be sent upon order receipt, production commencement, and shipment. The final shipping confirmation will include the FedEx Overnight tracking number.
Description:
A black-and-white image of a California grocery store aisle presents a scene of pristine order. Shelves are fully stocked, each item precisely arranged beneath the sterile hum of fluorescent lights. The signs—“novelties,” “vegetables,” “desserts & pies”—indicate choice and abundance. Yet the scene is devoid of people. That absence is the photograph’s core: an image of consumption defined by what it conceals—the labor that built it and the economic structures that maintain it.
The stillness of the image is not natural. It is manufactured by human labor carried out under economic necessity. Each gleaming surface and every stocked shelf represents hours of work performed in exchange for survival. Noam Chomsky captures this condition in plain terms: “What used to be called, centuries ago, ‘wage slavery’ is intolerable. And I don't think people ought to be forced to rent themselves in order to survive” (On Anarchism 89). The photograph stages this paradox quietly. It depicts a space that promises nourishment, but only through participation in the system that produced it.
Whether one stocks the frozen aisle or shops from it after a shift elsewhere, sustenance in this space is contingent on submission to wage labor. Chomsky refers to this arrangement as “private totalitarianism”: economic institutions that govern workers through hierarchical command structures (Government in the Future). The aisle is a corridor of economic compliance—order sustained by obedience, dependency masked as freedom.
This critique extends beyond factory floors and warehouses. The condition is structural. Most employment under capitalism demands that individuals rent their time in exchange for life’s basic necessities. As Chomsky writes, echoing Humboldt, labor under compulsion alienates the worker from themselves. Work becomes mechanical, not expressive—performed “with reluctance… under external control” (Government in the Future).
Tom O’Shea deepens this analysis. In his forthcoming work “Wage Slavery: A Neo-Roman Account,” he argues that wage labor constitutes a form of domination when survival depends on the will of another. This dependency defines not just labor, but life itself under capitalism (O’Shea 114–15). In this light, the grocery store becomes more than a retail space—it is a structure of quiet subjugation. The visual calm of the image mirrors the broader suppression of autonomy required to sustain it.
This perspective is not novel. Nineteenth-century American labor movements recognized wage labor as incompatible with democratic self-rule. The early labor press insisted, “those who worked in the mills should own them,” a call for collective control over the conditions of survival (On Anarchism 92). The photograph inherits this political lineage, documenting not a grocery aisle but a social contract: access to sustenance, contingent on acquiescence.
What appears clean, neutral, and calm is revealed to be anything but. The photograph captures a system that trades autonomy for survival, offers order in exchange for dependence, and transforms necessity into the illusion of choice.
Works Cited
Chomsky, Noam. Government in the Future. 1970. Chomsky.info.
Chomsky, Noam. On Anarchism. New Press, 2013.
O'Shea, Tom. "Wage Slavery: A Neo-Roman Account." European Journal of Political Theory, forthcoming 2024.