About | The Project

NEWS: The 2024 WorkSpace / WorkLife tour was successfully completed by mid-November. At the end of the production, Martin Weinhold met Don Snyder, former chair of Toronto’s School of Image Arts, in Ottawa for an interview where they were drawing a balance after 18 years of constant project work. You can find the interview on Don’s website.

WorkSpace Canada as special topic at the KD-Radio-Show, Tuesday, April 1st, 7 pm CET

WorkSpace was launched in Canada by Martin Weinhold in the fall of 2006. Its documentary mission: capturing the western world of work in the early 21st century as complete as possible. Weinhold pursued the project constantly with great passion ever since. Over the many production years an overall portrait of modern Canada emerged, as Weinhold depicted people and their fields of work in the entire country. WorkSpace Canada is both a profound artistic portrait study and a work of visual sociology.

Exploring the relationship between person and workplace is the project’s central idea. Weinhold wants to capture how daily work coins us, how it is shaping our personalities. An important inspiration came from political scientist Hannah Arendt. The project’s artistic approach is influenced by Arendt’ book The Human Condition. In the book she distinguishes between labour, work and action as different qualities of work and their varying potential for realizing our human capacities within a limited life time.

At present the WorkSpace collection consists of 4,750 selected photographs. The project is photographed exclusively on black and white medium format film. In 2021 a project offspring was born, called Work-Life in Canada: Portraits of continuity and change in the meaning of work. Previous protagonists are being revisited for a second portrait and interviewed about their work life biography by experienced sociology field researchers. Main partner for this new venture is the University of Alberta. In 2022 another five Canadian universities joined the collaborative project.

Do you want to support the WorkSpace Project? We would be honoured to have you among the many supporters of this unique project. There is a number of incentives that will be offered to persons and corporations in exchange for their support. For further information, please use the contact form below.

About | The Project’s Author

Martin Weinhold grew up in East-Berlin. He is a freelance photographer, author and instructor for visual media. He found his main artistic interest in social documentary photography. His independent art works explore their subject with great endurance and depth, the contextualized portrait is his particular passion. A main influence for his art practise are the portraits by New Objectivity painters like Otto Dix or Christian Schad.
Weinhold considers the portrait process a true dialogue situation, the resulting photograph being its visible translation. His most ambitious venture is the WorkSpace Canada Project. For its production he spends several months in the respective Canadian province or territory. Martin Weinhold believes in working on analogue material. In his eyes the limitations of this material are a means for keeping the artistic discipline. The same applies to the craft of photographic printing that he performs in his own darkroom facilities. Weinhold studied Communication in Social and Economic Contexts at the University of the Arts in Berlin. For many years he was cameraman for various German TV channels. He is based in Berlin and Toronto.

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WorkSpace portraits presented in Deichtorhallen Hamburg as part of the exhibition “Dix and the Present”.

Selected publications and pictures about the WorkSpace project: