Baker Library Photo Exhibit
PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY BAKER LIBRARY HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS
A special exhibit, “The Human Factor: Introducing the Industrial Life Photograph Collection at Baker Library,” opened at Baker in October and will run through March 7, 2007. The often highly stylized images, including work by Margaret Bourke-White and Lewis Hine, were meant to instill confidence in corporate America. Photos in the exhibit are drawn from more than 2,100 photographs from 115 businesses that were gathered in the 1930s. The intent was to supplement HBS classroom instruction in industrial production by providing students with visual evidence of the interaction between worker and machine. The collection invites the viewer to reflect on art and industry and humanity and modernization. In the image above, titled “War work–Hudson” (circa 1944, photographer unknown), women factory workers build dive bombers in a retooled Hudson Motor Cars plant.
At top left, a photo (circa 1934) by Fred C. Seely, titled “Combination slicing and wrapping machine,” taken at the Continental Baking Company, features an American icon, Wonder Bread.
To view the Baker exhibit, visit www.library.hbs.edu/hc/hf/.
