Thanks to Friend Tim for sending me this Atlantic article about the office photography of Chauncy Hare.

Photography started as a hobby for Chauncey Hare. For 27 years, he worked as a chemical engineer at the Standard Oil Company of California, using his camera to escape the tedium of the office. By 1977, he couldn’t take it anymore. But before he declared himself a “corporate dropout” and committed to art full-time, Hare trained his camera on the world he hoped to leave behind.

Remarkably (though this part’s not in the article), Hare quit his job again when he stopped being a photographer to become a clinical therapist specialising in “work abuse.” Clearly, the antiwork message to Hare was the work.

Before Hare died, in 2019, he saw to it that any future publication of his work would include the following disclaimer: “These photographs were made to protest and warn against the growing domination of working people by multinational corporations and their elite owners and managers.”

There’s a book about Hare’s life work called Quitting Your Day Job by Robert Slifkin.