Medewerkers van de Wolseley Motor Company in de Ward End Works, de fabriek in Birmingham 1932

F.R. Logan took this photograph of the Wolseley Motor Company employees in Birmingham, but we don't know exactly when. What I see are lines and lines of men, and lines and lines of machines. This factory feels so packed that the people become a kind of architecture – a human armature for industry. You can imagine the photographer Logan, trying to make sense of the scene, searching for a pattern amid the overwhelming detail. I wonder what it was like to make art in a time like this – to pause and reflect amid all the productivity? Maybe Logan found freedom in the grid of the factory floor, a structure to push against. There is a stillness in the photograph, yet the scene is full of motion, with each man absorbed in repetitive tasks. I bet they were all dreaming of ways to escape… maybe even to become an artist! The desire to make something from nothing is universal and timeless, after all.