Clocking In

Clocking In documents workers arriving at their workplaces each day. From a relatively fixed position, I photographed their backs as they entered offices, factories, and other work sites. Similar times, routes, and gestures recur from day to day, forming a stable rhythm of labour.

Most of the figures appear without visible faces. What remains are clothing, posture, personal belongings, and bodily outlines. Individual differences are still present, yet they are temporarily compressed by shared working hours and systems of attendance. Clocking in reduces the complexity of working life to a simple record: whether a person has appeared at the required place at the required time.

I placed or stitched together figures photographed at different moments, turning dispersed workers into a continuously advancing procession. Their repeated bodies reveal the collective rhythm of urban labour and the ways in which personal time is divided and regulated by work. The act of clocking in may appear minor, but it marks the beginning of the working day and returns life to the same recurring cycle.

The work examines how people are identified and recorded within everyday systems of labour. Once the face disappears, the body, the time, and the act of arrival become the evidence of presence. Through these repeated views from behind, Clocking In reflects on how labour structures daily life and inscribes an ongoing, often invisible rhythm upon the body.