Organs of a Divided Labour

Organs of a Divided Labour: Pipes and Fittings reprints the studio photography of a stainless-steel tubing catalogue and asks what happens to authorship when the pictures are this anonymous to begin with.

Jeremy Ayer, a Zurich-based photographer, appropriated the original commission images of pipe fittings, valves, and joints and rebuilt them into a 224-page book that is, page for page, close to indistinguishable from the industrial source. Mörel Books published it in 2021 with text by Leila Peacock and a conversation between Ayer and curator David Campany, printed in tritones with gloss and matte varnish so the plates keep the sheen of the original product shots. By claiming this commercial work as his own, Ayer puts a name to labour that catalogue photography almost never credits.

The book won a Swiss Design Award in 2022 in the photography category and became the first volume in Ayer's ongoing Organs of a Divided Labour project, which he continued with a second book built from flower photography shot in the same deadpan, product-catalogue style.