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The last worker walked away from the White Furniture Co. factory in Mebane,
N.C., in 1993. In an age of down-sizings, out-sourcings, buyouts and massive
layoffs, it would have been easy to ignore the closing of yet another small
factory in a small town.
But photographer Bill Bamberger didn't let the 111-year-old company go
quietly. Bamberger, an adjunct professor in the American Studies Curriculum and
School of Journalism and Mass Communication, documents the demise of the
venerable furniture company in Closing: The Life and Death of an American
Factory: Photographs by Bill Bamberger.
In a first-ever such exhibition for a Carolina faculty member, Closing will be
on view at the N.C. Museum of Art in Raleigh from July 26 through Oct. 18.
Audio-taped testimonials from former workers gathered by the University's
Southern Oral History Program will accompany the show (the tape includes
comments from Point-to-Point driver Robert Riley, featured in article below).
"Bamberger uses his camera to investigate, to consider and to advocate," said
John Coffey, the exhibition's curator. "Closing is an important photographic
event that addresses fundamentally important issues in our society."
Bamberger took the 55 images in Closing during the last four months of White
Furniture's operation, capturing the concentration, confidence and camaraderie
of men and women going about their work, and their individual and collective
grief when their jobs were pulled from under them.
"I wasn't really prepared for the impact this would have on the workers, many
of whom had spent their adult lives in this factory," Bamberger said.
Many of the 203 workers--who took pride in building high-end antique
reproductions--withdrew into denial as news of the closing came, Bamberger
said, reality not sinking in until the doors closed behind them.
He described one man who'd worked at White for 38 years: "After he was let go
he took the same walk he'd taken all those years and stood in a parking lot
across from the near-empty factory--that's an image that stands out for me."
Bamberger said he hopes viewers will sense from the exhibition that he formed
a relationship with the workers' community.
"The people portrayed are clear participants in the making of the
photographs," he said.
While one of Bamberger's motives for preserving the White Furniture factory on
film was to reveal the nuts-and-bolts of factory operations, another was to
honor the faces behind the labor.
"It's not just a chance to see the manufacturing side of this, but the chance
to see these workers as people and to recognize their humanity," he said. "You
see the impact of the layoff in a very intimate and immediate way in a country
where tens of thousands of people are losing their jobs in this very way."
Bamberger has been photographing America's people since 1979. His work has
been shown throughout the United States, including the High Museum of Art in
Atlanta, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia and the Burden
Gallery in New York.
Work from Bamberger's N.C. Museum of Art exhibition is included in a related
book, Closing: The Life and Death of an American Factory, written by Duke
University English professor Cathy N. Davidson and published by DoubleTake
Books/W.W. Norton.
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