┐ Carole Condé and Karl Beveridge └

© Carole Condé and Karl Beveridge, 1909, from the series Work in Progress, 1980

© Carole Condé and Karl Beveridge, 1956, from the series Work in Progress, 1980

“Work in Progress is a short history of working women from 1909 to 1979. Each decade is represented by a different woman posed in a kitchen in which the props change with each period. Each image has a window into which a documentary photo indicates the politics of the period, a calendar that indicates the predominant type of work in which women were employed and a family photo that indicates the family structure of the time (from extended family to a single mom).

The women are posed in relation to their job. 1909 shows a woman doing piecework at home with the last remnants of the slave trade in the window. 1919 shows a woman about to go out the door to work with her lunch bag while she is momentarily distracted by the window which shows the Winnipeg General Strike. 1928 shows a office worker (telephone operator) with Soviet woman tractor drivers in the window. 1938 shows an unemployed woman looking through the want ads with women from the Spanish Civil War in the window. 1945 has a woman war worker with soviet women pilots in the window. 1956 shows a woman retail or service worker fading into the background with a baby bottle (women being pushed back into the home) with the Hungarian uprising in the window. 1968 portrays a Quebecois woman with the Vietnam war pictured in the window. 1979 shows a South Asian women holding a photo of union women with women celebrating the independence of Zimbabwe.”

Carole and Karl’s