Visual Essay: Bodies

Abstract

Those that underpin the functioning of elite schools deliberately absence themselves, they occupy instead an inconspicuous shadowy realm. This is not an immaterial place as it is fully substantiated by labor: by black workers at Greystone in South Africa who can only bear witness to a passing parade of largely white coiffured girls; by the uniformed staff at Ripon College who are on hand, alert and attentive yet never front and center; by Filipina domestic workers, who are substitute mothers for some of the boys at Cathedral College, and whose rare days off consist of sharing cardboard shelters offering flimsy privacy in the bustling heart of Hong Kong; by staff at the Caledonian School who traverse the liminal space of a car park using a bicycle as a means of transportation; and by a lone worker in an empty classroom at Highbury Hall who is captured as a mere blur in the photographic frame.