The Revolutionaries

The collection follows technology from the steam engine to the learning machine. Machines do not act on their own. Someone decides what they are for, who works them, who profits and who pays. That is why every fortieth place belongs to a person: monarchs and emperors, industrialists, revolutionaries, a socialist on trial, dictators.

Each of these works is a moment, not a portrait: the day on which the consequences of a machine became political. Queen Victoria opening the Great Exhibition, Marx answering a toast to the proletarians of Europe, Ford announcing the five-dollar day, Stalin riding the unopened Moscow Metro. The date, the place and what happened are documented; the work page names the sources and says plainly what the record leaves open.

Only the named person is shown with a recognisable face, modelled on a photograph in the public domain. Everyone else stays anonymous. Nobody in this series is honoured or mocked. Each page says who the person was, what they set in motion and what it cost.