Striker on Picket Line of Packing House Workers, Chicago, Illinois
March 1948
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
gelatin silver print
Dimensions
image: 30.1 × 25.6 cm (11 7/8 × 10 1/16 in.) sheet: 35.4 × 27.8 cm (13 15/16 × 10 15/16 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Wayne F. Miller Family
Accession Number
2021.89.1
Art Historical Context
In March 1948, acclaimed photographer Wayne Miller captured *Striker on Picket of Packing House Workers, Chicago,*, a poignant gelatin silver print measuring 30.1 × 25.6 cm. This black-and-white image freezes a moment of resolve amid labor unrest, showing a determined striker amid the picket lines outside Chicago's massive meatpacking plants—hubs of the city's industrial workforce. The photograph emerges from a turbulent post-World War II era, when packinghouse workers, organized under unions like the United Packinghouse Workers of America, struck for fair wages, safer conditions, and racial ...
About the Artist
Wayne Miller
Wayne Miller (1918–2013) was an American documentary photographer whose long career brought him into contact with some of the most consequential events and social transformations of the twentieth century. Born in Chicago, he studied photography with Edward Steichen after serving as a Navy combat photographer during World War II — an experience that shaped his abiding commitment to photography as a...