^{Eric Percher's John on 14 (2008), photograph}

At Photographic Center Northwest. (Gallery site here.)

From 1999 to 2006, Eric Percher worked in finance, meaning he inhabited cubicles within offices within buildings within the grid of New York City. Everybody was making money. They didn't mind working all hours. Percher ran into the woman pictured below, Julia on 16, after 10 pm one night in 2007. The office lights went off at 10, but she was new and didn't know how to turn them back on, so she just kept working in the dark.

Percher's series, begun in 2006 and completed last year, is called Work. All the titles are the same: first name and (floor) number. The effect is a little biblical: each character is in place in this highly organized drama. There are no group portraits. Each worker is alone against the backdrop of the hive, which probably explains why most of the images were shot at night, after hours.

Some of the images zoom in on the individual or on close scenes. But the series' strength is its conflicted heart. Other photographs zoom out, locating the individuals (like John above, barely visible at first: he's to the right of the center point of the photograph, leaning over) deep within the boxes-within-boxes setting of midtown New York architecture and business.

On the one hand, this crisply captured environment could not be more stifling. Percher left finance for photography in 2006, right around when he started shooting this series, and his photographs (some overtly ominous) reflect his disillusion with this life. On the other hand it's cozy, secure, reaassuring—especially its promise of regularity, which has been undone since these photographs were made.

Maybe at one point Work looked more like a nightmare than a dream; I'm not sure that's still true.

More images here.