This Master’s thesis explores wage labour, dependencies, and labour organising through an expanded documentary practice combining analogue photography, questionnaires, and a publication as a situated research method. It asks how wage labour and exploitation can be perceived, discussed, and politically challenged as lived, embodied conditions of capitalism, and how artistic practices might contribute to this process.

Rather than treating documentary photography as neutral representation, the project understands it as a relational and politically embedded practice and draws on work by Martha Rosler, Allan Sekula, and Hito Steyerl. Images are approached as part of an assemblage of text, questions, and social relations shaped by power and context.

Developed in dialogue with specific strike contexts in Prato and grounded in trade union practice, the work links photographic production with collective organising. A questionnaire inspired by militant research transforms spectatorship into reflection and participation.

The publication circulates beyond institutional art contexts and addresses wage-dependent publics, combining photographies, questions, and practical organising tools. It investigates how documentary practices can move from representing labour strikes to participating in its contestation, enabling relations of solidarity and collective agency.