Waitoa slaughter house project:
"When I was a teenager growing up in Hawkes Bay, New Zealand a lot of my friends left school at 15 and worked in the Abattoirs. The country was doing well and my friends were making a lot of money back in the 1970s. I always wondered what it was like working in these places and how they could slaughter large animals day in day out without it affecting them…." -Derek Henderson
In this specific project, Derek Henderson focuses on solely portraits. He takes shots of multiple people who work at the slaughter house. He looks as if each subject was taken from their job in order to come get their photo taken. We can tell that they are obviously in their work clothes and some even have their tools on them as well. The workers wearing their on-the-job clothes really adds to the project itself. If they were wearing clean every day clothes, we would not quite get the same message.
Referring to the quote above by David, he says "I always wondered what it was like working in these places and how they could slaughter large animals day in day out without it affecting them…." I feel that this was his intent with this project. He wanted to take a large selection of people who worked at the slaughter house in order to maybe better understand how it affected them or even IF it affected them. He chose to photograph them with a grayish-white background rather than their work environment which I think was a good choice. This way we are forced to look solely at the subject themself.
As we can see, in some of the portraits, the subjects are smiling. Now, we don't know if it's because they're uncomfortable in front of the camera or if it's because their job doesn't seem to affect them at all in a negative way. As for how I respond to these pictures, I think they are strong conceptually. I feel that Derek Henderson does a good job reflecting his thoughts and his intentions through the photographs in this series.
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