My January-February 2023 research centered around the life and work of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, pioneers in the field of labor management and engineers of efficiency, both in the industrial and domestic sphere. The Gilbreths invented mechanisms to study human motion and relate it to work efficiency. Their research captured and measured movements of the body in order to figure out a least taxing, simplified, Frank Gilbreth’s coined “One Best Way,” to efficiently complete a task. This research was applied across multiple fields, including industrial labor management and method study, surgical operating room procedures, military practices of firearms loading, interior design, and even into the Gilbreth's own methodology of raising their twelve children. The term “Cheaper by the Dozen” was also an invention of theirs, naturally, being the title of their son’s book on being brought up in such an efficient-first household. The Gilbreths paved the way to our contemporary understanding of ergonomics.
The Kheel Center at Cornell University's school of Industrial and Labor Relations houses original motion study photographs of the Gilbreth’s, as well as microfilm reels of their documented research, interviews, publications, publicity and ephemera. In sifting through this material, I became particularly captivated by the motion study photographs, which have a palpable poetic quality beyond simple scientific documentation. In these photographs, as well as in the ephemera surrounding the lives and work of this family, I found an incredible bound zeal. The degree of devotion to methodology, to a promise of utopia in economized motion, elevated the menial movements of mundane tasks to something bordering on sacred. Channeling this, perfecting motion as a craft, and applying it to the socio-political world of labor and industry is one matter; The frozen promise present within these images is another. The tension imbued between these two aspects is where I wanted to situate myself for this project.
As I worked through the material, I wrote, reflected, and gathered material to place in conversation with the archive. In summation, I created a conversation between my own writing, making use of poetic language, repetitive sound, and the photo studies of the Gilbreth’s.
