Underpaid and overworked, Fast Food workers serve our food day in and day out while wearing conspicuous corporate uniforms, with all the conformity and anonymity associated with their low-status “McJobs.”

Unattractive and ill-fitting, these clothes serve their purpose: to make these workers look low-key and “uniform.” My subjects are just kids—strangers that I meet while they are on the job. I invite these workers to my studio to be photographed in their uniforms.

I purposefully create an ironic yet historical dialogue between my subjects and Renaissance portraiture. Historically, the portrait’s role was to immortalize the wealthy and important—to celebrate the individual. Conversely, my subjects have a difficult time earning a living wage. Transplanted from their work environment, they look vulnerable yet dignified as they peer from behind their visors and into my camera. Although they are dressed like thousands of other workers, if you look close, you can see their nobility.

About Shauna Frischkorn

Shauna Frischkorn received her MFA in photography from the State University of New York at Buffalo.  Her work has been published in the New York Times, Time Magazine, AdBusters, and Mother Jones Magazine and widely exhibited in galleries and museums across the United States, including The National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC; The Print Center in Philadelphia; Jen Bekman Gallery, New York, NY; and The Center for Photography at Woodstock, NY. She has received a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship. Her work is in the collections of Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA; University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA; and the Microsoft Art Collection, Redmond, WA.  Frischkorn’s photographs deal with popular culture in everyday life. [Official Website]