About | The Project

NEWS: As of May 2025 the post production for the last WorkSpace / WorkLife tour is completed. Thanks to all 2024 protagonists! Your courage and openness made it possible to create a whole new chapter for this unique project.

Listen to a radio show featuring WorkSpace Canada! Martin Weinhold being the special guest of radio host Prof. Klaus Dörre. It is about the story of 18 years of project work and about the sounds of work. Short version available here:
Radio OKJ website.

WorkSpace was launched in Canada by Martin Weinhold in the fall of 2006. His 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 project years an overall portrait of modern Canada emerged, as Weinhold depicted people and their fields of work in the entire country. For the photography he spent several weeks, sometimes up to months, in the respective Canadian area, province or territory. WorkSpace Canada is both a profound artistic portrait study and a work of visual sociology. With the last full production tour in 2024 the project is considered complete. The final presentation will commence with a celebration in Edmonton, Alberta, taking place in the fall of 2026.

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 Hannah Arendt. The project’s artistic approach is influenced by her book The Human Condition. In the book Arendt 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 5,000 selected photographs. All Images are on black and white medium format film. In 2021 a project offspring was born. The new approach is 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 Prof. Sara Dorow and the University of Alberta, another five Canadian universities joined the collaborative project WorkLife.

Do you want to support the WorkSpace Project? We would be honoured to have you among the many supporters of this epic undertaking. 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. He also 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.

Follow Martin Weinhold on Instagram:

WorkSpace portraits presented in Deichtorhallen Hamburg in 2023 / 2024 as part of the exhibition “Dix and the Present”.

Selected publications and pictures about the WorkSpace project: